The Dramatists Guild Foundation and The Lillys Reveal Darrin Terpstra and Morgan Webber-Ottey as the 2024 Recipients of The Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship

The Dramatists Guild Foundation and The Lillys have announced graduate students Darrin Terpstra and Morgan Webber-Ottey as the 2024 recipients for the Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship. Created in honor of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, this fellowship helps ensure the next generation of women and non-binary playwrights of color are able to follow in her footsteps and continue to create new work and develop their writing careers, regardless of their economic situation.

In an effort to rectify documented disparities based on gender and identity, the fellowship is awarded, on the basis of both merit and need, to graduate students enrolled in select writing programs across the country. Each writer receives a $25,000 stipend for each year of matriculation and up to $75,000 for living expenses, not covered by subsidized tuition. This year’s recipients were selected by acclaimed playwright, director, and actress Seret Scott.

The fellowship was developed as part of the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, under the leadership and vision of Julia Jordan and Lynn Nottage. The 2023 recipients of the Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship were Amalia Oliva Rojas and Danielle Stagger.

Darrin Terpstra (he/him/his and they/them/theirs) is a Korean American playwright from Des Moines, IA. He is a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship. They earned a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa, where his primary focus was crafting intersections between Christian theology and queer theory. Darrin’s plays include Backyard Alien, an exploration of the transgender and immigrant metaphors within the idea of alien superheroes; This Is My Body, a depiction of two queer Southern Baptist pastors learning how to wrestle with God; and Ghost Town, a grief narrative in which two trans people attempt to summon a ghost from a local legend. Currently, he is pursuing their Playwriting MFA in the Iowa Playwrights Workshop.

Morgan Webber-Ottey is a recovering lawyer-turned-drama writer, born and raised on NYC’s Upper West Side, with detours in Nashville and Madrid. Her darkly satirical, character-driven writing centers deeply flawed women of color who are often misfits or underdogs. Morgan is a selected fellow for the 2024 NHMC’s Series Scriptwriters Program, an NBC and Disney/ABC sponsored program. She is a Stowe Story Labs/SAGindie Fellowship winner and was a second rounder in the Warner Bros. TV Writers’ Workshop. She previously worked as the Script Coordinator on the final, 20-episode season of Manifest on Netflix, and she is a proud alum of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Writers’ Access Support Staff Training Program. Morgan holds a B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University, a J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School, and is an incoming MFA candidate at Northwestern University’s Writing for the Screen + Stage.

The Dramatists Guild Foundation manages the $2.5 million Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship endowment and administers awarding of the fellowship each year.

For more information about DGF Awards for dramatists and how to support theater writers in your community, visit DGF.org and follow at @dgfound.