Nearly two years ago, Quiara Alegria Hudes stopped by this very blog to tell us about Welcome to My Neighborhood: A Barrio ABC, the beautiful picture book she’d written (illustrated by Shino Arihara). Imagine how thrilled we were to learn she became the first Latina to win the Pulitzer Drama Award yesterday! Congratulations, Quiara!

Her play, Water by the Spoonful, chronicles the experiences of a wounded Hispanic soldier returning to his Philadelphia neighborhood after serving in Iraq, and was written when Hudes was a playwright-in-residence at the Hartford Stage in Hartford, CT.

The Pulitzer isn’t the first major award she’s won for her work, either. She wrote the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights, and has previously been honored with a Lucille Lortel Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award. Her plays include Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, 26 Miles, Yemaya’s Belly, and Water By the Spoonful.