IN THE HEIGHTS' Quiara Alegria Hudes to Speak at City Tech, 12/1

New York City College of Technology (City Tech) and Theatreworks will proudly present Back in the Heights featuring Tony Award-winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes on Thursday, December 1, 4 p.m., at Voorhees Theater, 186 Jay Street (north of Tillary), Downtown Brooklyn. Admission is free and open to the public. For ticket reservations go to www.theatreworkscitytech.org and click on "get tickets." 

Best known for writing the book for Broadway's IN THE HEIGHTS, winner of four Tony awards including for Best Musical, Hudes will give a talk and answer questions from the audience at City Tech. In the Heights also earned her the Lucille Lortel Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award. She has been called "one of the most important playwrights of her generation" (Atlanta Journal Constitution) with "a confident and arresting voice" (The New York Times).

Hudes was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2007 for her critically-acclaimed play, ELLIOT, A SOLDIER'S FUGUE. The New York Times called ELLIOT "that rare and rewarding thing: a theatre work that succeeds on every level while creating something new." She recently made Latina Magazine's list of Top 100 Latinos of the Year, as well as the cover of American Theatre Magazine. Her play Water By the Spoonful will premiere at Hartford Stage this fall. Another play, The Happiest Song Plays Last, will debut at the Goodman Theatre later this season.

Her plays have been published in numerous anthologies and have been produced around the around the world, including Centro de Bellas Artes (Puerto Rico), International Forum (Tokyo), Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, DC), and Pantages Theater (Hollywood, CA). Her work is published by Dramatists Play Service, Scholastic Inc. and American Theater Magazine.

Hudes recently received a United States Artists Fontanals Fellowship as well as a Resolution from the City of Philadelphia honoring the writing she has done about her hometown. She is a resident playwright at New Dramatists in New York and was previously a Joyce Fellow at the Goodman Theatre, as well as a two-time fellow at the Sundance Theater Institute, and a resident playwright at the O'Neill Theater Center. After attending public school, she studied music composition at Yale and received her MFA in playwriting from Brown.

In addition to Hudes' presentation, the December 1 event includes dance performances by City Tech students and those from other CUNY colleges. Production support is being provided by students and faculty of City Tech's nationally unique Department of Entertainment Technology (www.entertainmenttechnology.org).

The largest public college of technology in New York State, New York City College of Technology of The City University of New York enrolls more than 16,000 students in 62 baccalaureate, associate and specialized certificate programs. Located at 300 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, City Tech is at the MetroTech Center academic and commercial complex, convenient to public transportation