Sanaz Toossi (photographed by Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York Times)
Sanaz Toossi (Dramatic Writing MFA '18) was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play English.
"A quietly powerful play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in a storefront school near Tehran, where family separations and travel restrictions drive them to learn a new language that may alter their identities and also represent a new life."
Sanaz Toossi is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include the critically acclaimed, award-winning ENGLISH (co-production Atlantic Theater Company/Roundabout Theatre Company) and WISH YOU WERE HERE (Playwrights Horizons; Williamstown/Audible, released 2020). She is currently under commission at Atlantic Theater Company (Launch commission; Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation grant), Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (American Revolutions Cycle). In television, Sanaz recently staffed on INVITATION TO A BONFIRE (AMC); A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (Amazon); FIVE WOMEN (Marielle Heller/ Big Beach); and sold an original idea, THE PERSIANS, to FX with Joe Weisberg & Joel Fields attached as Executive Producers. Sanaz is a member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at the Lark, and an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group. She was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow, a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award, and the 2022 recipient of The Horton Foote Award. MFA: NYU Tisch.