The New Yorker's Vinson Cunningham Wins 2021-22 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism

Vinson Cunningham, a theatre critic at The New Yorker magazine, has been named winner of the 2021-22 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. The award comes with a $10,000 prize and commemorative trophy.

Mr. Nathan directed in his will that the prize is "to be awarded annually by a majority vote of the then heads of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton, and Yale Universities." This committee of three has functioned since the award was established. The chair of the English department of Cornell University heads the selection committee. In recent years the committee has also included drama specialists from each university.

According to The New Yorker, Vinson Cunningham joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2016. Since 2019, he has served as a theatre critic for the magazine. In 2020, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for his Profile of the comedian Tracy Morgan. His writing on books, art, and culture has appeared in the Times Magazine, the Times Book Review, Vulture, the Awl, The Fader, and McSweeney's, where he wrote a column called "Field Notes from Gentrified Places."

Cunningham previously served as a staff assistant at the Obama White House.