Sweat, Lynn Nottage's topical reflection of the present and poignant outcome of America's economic decline, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2017, it was announced yesterday (10 April).

Set in a city in Pennsylvania, Sweat tells the story of a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets and laughs while working together on the factory floor. But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in a heart-wrenching fight to stay afloat.

The play received its premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in October 2015, and is currently playing at Studio 54 on Broadway. It has been praised as 'the first theatrical landmark of the Trump era' (New Yorker), and previously won the 2016 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Lynn Nottage is the first woman writer to win a second Pulitzer Prize for Drama, having previously triumphed in 2009 for Ruined, her passionate, heartfelt play set in a small mining town deep in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Other NHB-published playwrights to win the Prize include Annie Baker for The Flick in 2014, Bruce Norris for Clybourne Park in 2011, Tracy Letts for August: Osage County in 2008, and David Lindsay-Abaire for Rabbit Hole in 2007.