Eboni Booth Receives the MTC 2024-2025 Judith Champion Playwriting Fellowship

Manhattan Theatre Club has announced Pulitzer Prize winner Eboni Booth as the 2024-25 recipient of MTC’s Judith Champion Playwriting Fellowship, which is awarded annually. Fully supported by the late philanthropist and former MTC Patron Judith Champion, the Fellowship provides artistic and financial resources to one playwright each season to write and develop a new commissioned play while in residence at MTC. Fellowship recipients participate in the life of the institution in a manner tailored to their strengths and interests. In addition to a commission, the recipient is provided with a living allowance, access to office and rehearsal space, a ticket stipend, and a developmental workshop of at least one play during their fellowship year. Booth succeeds the 2023-24 Fellow, Sanaz Toossi, and the inaugural 2022-23 Fellow, Zora Howard.

MTC Artistic Director Lynne Meadow said, “We are thrilled that Eboni Booth, who has been a member of the MTC family since 2017, is joining us in this new and exciting capacity. We are also looking forward to continuing to honor Judith Champion’s legacy as an ardent supporter of artists and their work with our third Champion Playwriting Fellow. Judi believed wholeheartedly in empowering the most talented writers of our time to continue creating new and exciting work for the stage, and we remain extremely grateful for her contributions to MTC and to the theatrical community at large. I am sure that Judi would be proud of the impact Zora, Sanaz, and now Eboni are making and will continue to make on the American Theatre.”

“We are overjoyed to have the remarkable Eboni Booth in residence with us this season through the Judith Champion Playwriting Fellowship,” said Scott Kaplan, MTC’s Director of Play Development. “We have long been admirers of Eboni’s extraordinary theatrical gifts, and we couldn’t be happier at the prospect of embarking on a year of close collaboration with this wonderful artist.”

Eboni Booth is a writer and actor from New York City. Her plays include Primary Trust(Roundabout Theatre, Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Outer Critics Circle Award) and Paris (Atlantic Theater). For television, she has written for Hulu’s “We Were the Lucky Ones” and HBO Max’s “Julia.” As an actor, Eboni has appeared in productions at Playwrights Horizons, LCT3, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, WP Theater, Page 73, Soho Rep., Clubbed Thumb, and more. Eboni is a resident playwright at New Dramatists, and the recipient of a Dramatists Guild Horton Foote Award, a Steinberg Playwright Award, a Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, and a John Gassner Award. She is a graduate of Juilliard’s playwriting program and the University of Vermont.