Quiara Alegría Hudes is a West-Philly-born-and-bred language grrrl. Her critically-acclaimed memoir My Broken Language is the Free Library’s One Book One Philadelphia citywide read. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Water by the Spoonful, and Pulitzer finalist play Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue explore the diasporican community in Philly and beyond. For the screen, Hudes adapted her Tony Award-winning Broadway musical In the Heights into a major motion picture and wrote Vivo, an animated feature, both with collaborator/composer Lin-Manuel Miranda. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, The Nation, and most notably American Theater Magazine, where High Tide of Heartbreak was read widely throughout the theater industry. With her cousin, Hudes founded and runs a prison writing project, Emancipated Stories. Check out this recent interview to hear where her mind and spirit are at these days, and learn more about her body of work here.