On Monday, April 16, Visiting Writer in Theater Quiara Alegria Hudes received word that she had won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play “Water by the Spoonful.” The screenplay is about an Iraq war veteran struggling to return to life in his hometown Philadelphia. Working in a sandwich shop and coping with his addict mother, his story intersects with four other wayward souls in an internet chatroom. First performed by the Hartford Stage Co. earlier this year, “Water” is the second in a planned trilogy also featuring Hudes’ 2007 play “Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue.”

Hudes became well known through her critically-acclaimed book on the Tony-Award Winning (and Wesleyan-based) musical “In the Heights.” Hudes has been up for a Pulitzer in the past, when “Elliot” was nominated as a finalist for the prize.