Mo Holmes Receives 2026 Yale Drama Series Prize for AMANDA
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins selected the play, which Yale University Press will publish following its staged reading.
Playwright, librettist and dramaturg Mo Holmes will receive the 2026 Yale Drama Series Prize for her play, AMANDA. The work was selected by Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwright and Yale faculty member Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, in his second year judging the competition.
On Thursday, October 29, Holmes will be honored at Yale Schwarzman Center with a staged reading of AMANDA and the conferral of the David Charles Horn Award, which provides the winning playwright a $10,000 cash prize. The play will also be published by Yale University Press, which collaborates with the David Charles Horn Foundation and Yale Schwarzman Center to administer the Prize and bring each year's winning play to performance and print.
Holmes joins eighteen playwrights recognized over the twenty-year history of the Yale Drama Series, which concludes with the 2026 award.
AMANDA, inspired by Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, is a psychosocial doll and puppet horror-fantasy charting the violence of becoming an upwardly mobile Southern Black girl. Set in a childish, anachronistic conception of Black D.C. across “plantation-times and now-times, and all the in-between.” In the play, four characters, all named Amanda, move through a series of lessons on society, school, race and sex, salvation, secrets and more, under the watch of Mother. AMANDA explores what becomes possible during playtime: What if you could bite your Mother? Be her? Defend her? Touch her?
"I am thrilled to receive the Yale Drama Series Prize in its final year. Writing AMANDA was like writing in a diary. I wrote privately, vulnerably, to delight and frighten myself. It's ironic that it will be published, and yet fitting, as throughout the play the Amandas ruminate on what it means to debut: to be seen, heard, bought and consumed. Thank you especially to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whose adaptations motivated and inspired my own work on this play. His recognition of AMANDA is very affirming of this project, and so meaningful to me,” said playwright Mo Holmes.
“We're honored to welcome Mo to the Schwarzman Center and to create space for AMANDA to make the essential leap from page to performance. It's a privilege to celebrate her achievement and the remarkable community of writers the Yale Drama Series Prize has championed over the past twenty years.” said Rachel Fine, Executive Director of Yale Schwarzman Center.
“The Yale Drama Series has established an extraordinary pathway for emerging playwrights to have their work recognized, experienced by an audience and ultimately published by a distinguished press,” said Niko Pfund, Director of Yale University Press.
The Yale Drama Series recognizes an emerging playwright for an original, unpublished full-length play selected anonymously by a distinguished playwright serving as judge. Since its founding in 2006, the Yale Drama Series has served as a launching pad for emerging playwrights from around the world. Over twenty years, the competition has received more than 27,000 submissions from 134 countries and helped bring new voices to publication and production.
Established by Francine Horn in memory of her late husband and business partner, David Charles Horn, the Foundation has supported the Yale Drama Series since its inception, helping create opportunities for emerging writers to see their work performed and published.
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