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-{{ovation.company}}A Woman's Journey
Hudes absorbed the stories of her second-grade educated grandmother, the spiritual teachings of her priestess mother, and the shrewd advice of her powerful female mentors, and forged a literary path all her own. In her own plays she has delved into the female body and spirit while in her life she has balanced changing diapers, building a marriage, service to the community, and leadership at the top of her field. In a searing, sensual, and personal presentation, Hudes discusses the spiritual and intellectual components of her feminine self and the wisdom she inherited from those who came before.
A Writer’s Many Selves
Hudes grew up in an improbably diverse setting--a childhood and adolescence where many nationalities and religious practices intersected as a daily matter of course. How did she find the connective tissue between Vietnamese and Ethiopian neighbors, street performance artists, Quakerism, Santeria and Western classical music to forge a literary voice all her own? In a nation that is increasingly diverse and where check-boxes are incomplete tools of understanding, this bicultural artist finds energy and a new kind of American identity in the connective tissue between her many selves.
Art and Commerce
How does an artist put food on the table? How do foundations, donors, and institutions help artists on their wildly unpredictable creative journeys? The needs of the artistic process--freedom, trial and error, long-term exploration--often conflict with the needs of foundations and institutions--return on investment, fiscal year budgeting, concrete reporting. With blatant honesty Hudes dissects the finances of a creative life and discusses how artists and their supporters can forge more organic and beneficial partnerships.
The Latino Artist Today
How do you capture the essence of the wildly diverse, almost undefinable “Latino artist” of today? Through jokes, politics, statistics, anecdotes, and poetic passages, Hudes attempts to define the undefinable next wave of American art.
Quiara Alegría Hudes received handwritten rave reviews from the students of Deerfield Academy
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES joined Deerfield Academy for their annual author series and made a meaningful impact on the students and faculty. Speaking to a crowd of 700 9th through 12th graders, Hudes discussed her Pulitzer-winning play Water By the Spoonful, as well as her memoir My Broken Language, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal, and shared reflections on her work as an author and theater maker. The audience was thrilled to engage with the Tony Award-winning cultural leader, sharing hand-written thank you letters that affirmed the innovative impact Hudes has in her keynote addresses and moderated Q&A conversations. The host shared: “The event was a huge success. The students really enjoyed Quiara’s session.” (Deerfield Academy)
The audience raved of the changemaker:
Watch Quiara Alegría Hudes on Washington Post >>
In the Heights screenwriter and playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes shares untold stories about the hit Broadway show and film
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Tony Award-winning musician QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES is the screenwriter for the major motion picture In the Heights and wrote the script for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical by the same name. Now she takes us behind the scenes in her new book In the Heights: Finding Home, co-written with Lin Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, which showcases Hudes’ talent in creating the beloved story which offers a celebratory answer to the question, “Where do I belong?” The book does more than trace the making of an unlikely Broadway smash and a major motion picture: it gives fans an intimate look at the decades-long creative life of In the Heights, offering untold stories, perceptive essays, and heartfelt annotations. In her fun talks, Hudes shares these unforgettable stories, as well as the deeper impact of the film and play on LatinX representation on Broadway and Hollywood, in all of its colorful, celebratory glory for the world to embrace.
Watch Hudes give a behind the scenes look at the In The Heights movie here >>
Quiara Alegría Hudes tells her lyrical story of coming of age against the backdrop of an ailing Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling Puerto Rican family as a collective muse
In QUIARA ALEGRIA HUDES' My Broken Language: A Memoir, she was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced in her grandmother’s tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her aunts and uncles and cousins, but haunted by the secrets of the family and the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio—even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars. Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering circle of powerful orisha-like women with tragic real-world wounds, and she vowed to tell their stories—but first she’d have to get off the stairs and join the dance. She’d have to find her language.
Weaving together Hudes’s love of books with the stories of her family, the lessons of North Philly with those of Yale, her book and talks are an inspired exploration of home, memory, and belonging—narrated by an obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty. The book was named to TIME's 15 New Books You Should Read in April.
Quiara Alegría Hudes is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of "Water By the Spoonful"; author of a memoir, My Broken Language; and screenwriter for the major motion picture In the Heights. Previously, she wrote the book (aka script) for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and Hollywood blockbuster In the Heights and authored other plays and musicals that have been produced around the world. Her notable essays include "High Tide of Heartbreak" in American Theater Magazine and "Corey Couldn’t Take It Anymore" in The Cut. In opposition of the carceral state, Hudes and her cousin founded Emancipated Stories, a platform where people behind bars can share one page of their life story with the world. As a barrio feminist and joyous mischief maker, Quiara y su hermana created the Latinx Casting Manifesto.