Lin-Manuel Miranda ‘Jumped and Danced and Cried’ Over In the Heights Collaborator's Pulitzer Win

When news broke that Quiara Alegría Hudes had been awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful, no one was more excited than Lin-Manuel Miranda, her collaborator on Tony-winning musical In The Heights. That is, once he figured out what the fuss was all about. 

“I thought something very bad had happened,” Miranda recently told Broadway.com on the Ghost red carpet. “I came out of the train and I had missed calls from The New York Times and an email from Junot Diaz and I was like, ‘Oh my God who died? What is happening?’ Then I found out it was Quiara getting her long-deserved Pulitzer and I jumped and danced and cried and we had a celebration at her house that night.”

Hudes was previously a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her 2007 play Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue and again for In the Heights in 2009. When her win finally came, it turned out that Miranda heard the good news before Hudes herself. “She was in class, teaching at my alma mater Wesleyan so she didn’t hear for a full hour,” Miranda explained. “So I called her husband. Basically her phone had gone to empty because it had exploded.”

So what were Miranda’s congratulatory words once he finally managed to get Hudes’ ear? “I said, ‘We’re not going to be able to call you two-time Pulitzer finalist Quiara Hudes anymore, we have to call you Pulitzer winner,’” Miranda exclaimed. “Which sounds much better.”