PUNCH BACK by Genevieve Simon Wins 2026 Leah Ryan Fund Prize

The Leah Ryan Fund has announced the winner of the 2026 Leah Prize, Genevieve Simon's Punch Back. In Simon's play seven trans college students fall in love and secretly distribute HRT while learning how to box in the red state of Ohio. The play will have a public reading on Saturday July 25th at Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.

The Leah Ryan Fund also awards honorable mention citations to Karina Billini's The Forty-Ninth Year, Ananda Long's KINYOZI: A Hair Story, and Jasmine Sharma's Gunner.

The finalists for this year's award are Nova Black, Anna Clart, Kate Cortesi, Zizi Magid, Maureen Sebastian and Elise Wien.

“Punch Back winning this award is a deeply meaningful endorsement of the need for more gender-affirming, physically challenging roles for trans actors in the American theatre canon. At a time when trans lives are being threatened by people at the highest levels of government, and when many in the arts, medicine, sports, and other fields are quietly abandoning trans people, I thank the Leah Ryan Fund for standing with young trans people, who need to see themselves celebrated as complex, messy, hilarious, and loved” Simon said.

“It's always a privilege to remember Leah Ryan with this award. This year we are especially honored to do so by supporting Genevieve's voice and work, and to provide space for trans representation and to uplift trans stories and artists,” said board member Ed Cheetham.

Genevieve Simon (he/they) is an actor and playwright born in Ohio and based in New York. He is a 2025 NYSCA Commission Winner, a 2023-24 New Georges Audrey Resident, and a member of the 2024 Page 73 Writers Group. Their climate-doom-comedy Bloom Bloom Pow was a Finalist for the 2022 EMOS Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and has recently been produced at Skidmore College and Willamette University. Genevieve's work has been supported by Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, Breaking The Binary, The Brick, Fresh Ground Pepper, The Motor Company, Oberlin College, Shadowland Stages, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arts on Site, Philly Theatre Week, Holton-Arms School, Cincinnati Fringe Festival, The Parsnip Ship, and The Tank. Genevieve's other plays include This Bug Is Gay, Guarding, Sister/Friend, and Hell Is Real. Published in Howlround Theatre Commons and by 1319 Press. New Georges Affiliated Artist. Playwriting Lecturer, Skidmore College. www.genevieve-simon.com

About the Leah Ryan Fund

The Leah Ryan Fund began giving out The Leah in 2010 to honor the memory of Leah Ryan, and to encourage and support the work of brilliant and unrecognized women, trans, and non-binary playwrights. It is the purpose of the prize to perpetuate the integrity, compassion, and creativity that Leah herself possessed and inspired in others.

Winners of The Leah playwriting prize receive a $5,000 cash award and a public reading and summer workshop as part of the Powerhouse Theater Program at Vassar College. As hoped, the prize has been a springboard for winners who have subsequently won other competitions, have received full-staged productions of their work, and/or have gone on to successful careers in theater, TV, and film. https://leahryanfund.org