Annie Baker, who graduated from the Brooklyn College M.F.A. playwriting program in 2009, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her play “The Flick.” This award comes on the heels of the Guggenheim fellowship she received just last week. “This is great news for Annie. She was a brilliant student in all respects, and a wonderful theater maker,” said Distinguished CUNY Professor Mac Wellman, director of the playwriting M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College and a mentor to Baker. “No one is more deserving of this award. We all salute Annie.” “The Flick,” which draws from the disorientation Baker experienced from watching a digital projection of an Ingmar Bergman movie, also garnered the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and an Obie for Excellence in Playwriting. It also received Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominations for Best Play. Currently an adjunct dramatic writing professor at New York University, Baker has earned several accolades, including an Obie for her 2009 play “Circle Mirror Transformation,” and her adaptation of Anton Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” for the Soho Rep company, for which she received a Drama Desk nomination for best revival. “This is just one more proof of our students’ accomplishments,” says Wellman, an award-winning playwright himself. The M.F.A. playwriting program at Brooklyn College, which is part of the English Department, was started more than 30 years ago by Jack Gelber, one of America’s most important experimental writers. It has produced several playwrights who have earned numerous distinctions. In 2009, Poets & Writers, the journal for creative writing, ranked Brooklyn College’s Creative Writing M.F.A. program among the top 15 in the nation, topping several Ivy League institutions.
