The winner of the annual Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2025 has been announced, with US playwright a.k. payne picking up the Prize for their play Furlough’s Paradise.

The winner was announced last night, 10 March 2025, at a ceremony at New York’s Playwrights Horizons.

Now in its 47th year, the Prize is the largest and oldest international playwriting award recognising women+ writers for plays of outstanding quality written for the English-speaking theatre.

a.k. payne has won a $25,000 cash prize, and a special limited-edition piece of art created specifically for Winners and signed by Willem De Kooning.

The winner and 8 other finalists were chosen from over 200 submitted plays.

Additional awards have gone to two of the finalists, with these Special Commendations receiving $10,000 each. They are: 49 Days by Haruna Lee (Taiwan-Japan-US), submitted by Playwrights Horizons (New York); and An Oxford Man by Else Went (US), submitted by South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa).

The other finalists, who each win $5,000, are: Chris Bush (UK) Otherland; Carys Coburn (Ireland) BÁN; Keiko Green (US) You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World; Haruna Lee (Taiwan-Japan-US) 49 Days; Isobel McArthur (UK-Scotland) The Fair Maid of the West; Suzie Miller (Australia-UK) Inter Alia; Else Went (US) An Oxford Man; and Anna Ziegler (US) The Janeiad.

On receiving the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a.k. payne said: “I am so grateful to receive this award and join a list of some of my favorite writers whose plays have shaken how I understand the world and who have made it possible—through their words transcending space and time and/or their caring and abundant mentorship — for me to write: Katori Hall, Julia Cho, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, Benedict Lombe and Paula Vogel to name a very select few.”

Prize executive director Leslie Swackhamer said: “At this moment in our history as a country, and as a Prize which honors women, trans and non-binary writers, we must acknowledge the very real threats that are being aimed at our hard-won freedoms. We must remind ourselves of the power of our voices, and the special magic we create when we lift them at the theatre. Every voice on our stage tonight deserves to be honored, celebrated and heard.”

The judging panel for the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize was: Linda Cho (US) – Tony Award-winning costume designer; Jennifer Ehle (US) – Tony and BAFTA Award-winning actress; Nancy Medina (UK) – Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic; Mark Ravenhill (UK) – Acclaimed playwright; George Strus (US) – Founder, Breaking the Binary Theatre; and Indira Varma (UK) – Olivier Award-winning actress.

Indira Varma is currently starring in the West End alongside Rami Malek in Oedipus at The Old Vic theatre in London; Linda Cho’s award-winning Broadway costumes for The Great Gatsby will be seen in London this spring when the show transfers to the London Coliseum; Mark Ravenhill’s new play Ben & Imo is transferring from the RSC to the Orange Tree Theatre in London this spring, running from 19 April 2025; and Nancy Medina recently won Best Director at the Black British Theatre Awards for Choir Boy.

Last year’s 2024 Prize went to Ava Pickett for her play, 1536; and other past winners include Annie Baker, Julia Cho, Caryl Churchill, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Katori Hall, Lucy Kirkwood, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, Dael Orlandersmith, Lucy Prebble, Wendy Wasserstein, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Cheryl West.

Founded in 1978, over 500 plays have been honoured as Finalists of the Prize and many have gone on to receive other top honours, including Olivier, Lilly, Evening Standard and Tony Awards for Best Play. Eleven Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist playwrights have subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The Prize results in more productions of plays by women+ writers and fosters the interchange of plays between the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries.

Otherland by Chris Bush (Standing at the Sky’s Edge) is currently playing at the Almeida Theatre in London. Inter Alia by Suzie Miller (Prima Facie) is being staged at the National Theatre in London this summer, starring Rosamund Pike.

More about Furlough’s Paradise

Payne has described her play as a “lyrical journey about grief, home, and survival.”Furlough’s Paradise tells the story of two cousins and their intertwined yet wildly divergent lives. Sade and Mina, raised like sisters, return to their childhood town for the funeral of their mother and aunt. While Sade is on a three-day furlough from prison and Mina experiences a brief reprieve from her career and life on the West Coast, the two try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship. But traumas and resentments from the past, both real and surreal, threaten to pull them apart, all as time ticks towards the correctional officer’s arrival. A tight 80-page play for two actors, the play masterfully explores what it means to be a Black woman in today’s America and shines a bright light on the lack of social safety nets in the wealthiest country in the world. The play won the 20th annual Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, as well as the National Theatre Conference’s Stavis Playwriting Award. 

Furlough’s Paradise was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize by Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre which premiered the play in 2024, directed by the Alliance’s Artistic Director, Tinashe Kajese-Bolden.  This April, the play will receive its West Coast premiere, also directed by Kajese-Bolden, at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

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Main photo: a.k.payne. Photo via PR

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