Online Reservations for 2016 Distinguished Author Award Now Open!

The Royden B. Davis, S. J.,
Distinguished Author Award Presentation
honoring
Stephen Karam
October 29, 2016
5:00 P.M. DeNaples Ball Room

Stephen Karam

  • $ 60 per person
  • $ 25 per student
  • $ 55 for Friends members & Schemel Forum members
  • $ 20 per Student Friends member

For what is sure to be a sell-out event, purchase your admission or sponsorship today! (Invitation packets will be mailed the beginning of September. Checks made payable to The Friends of the Weinberg Library may be mailed in advance of the packets to reserve your seat. For more information visit www.scranton.edu/authaward or contact kym.fetsko@scranton.edu, 570.941.7816.

Stephen Karam is best known for his Tony-Award winning play The Humans, which centers on a Thanksgiving dinner in a New York City apartment, hosted by a former Scrantonian for her parents, sister, and grandmother, who have traveled in for the day from Northeastern Pennsylvania for the holiday. In addition to the Tony, The Humans was also awarded the Drama Desk Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama League Award, and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Karam also received the 2016 Obie Award for Playwriting.

Stephen’s Sons of the Prophet, was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the recipient of the 2012 Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and Hull-Warriner Awards for Best Play. Other plays by Mr. Karam include Speech & Debate, the inaugural production of Roundabout Underground; and the libretto for Dark Sisters, an original chamber opera with composer Nico Muhly. For film, he has written screenplay adaptations of Chekhov’s The Seagull (starring Annette Bening, Elisabeth Moss, Corey Stoll and Saoirse Ronan), and Speech & Debate. Stephen is the recipient of the inaugural Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Drama Desk and Horton Foote Playwriting Awards. He teaches graduate playwriting at The New School. A graduate of Brown University, Stephen was born and raised in Scranton, PA.

CRITICS’ PICK “A haunting, beautifully realized play, quite possibly the finest we will see all season… Blisteringly funny and altogether wonderful.” —Charles Isherwood,The New York Times

“Absolutely, relentlessly gripping… Rackingly funny even as it pummels the heart and scares the bejesus out of you.” —Jesse Green, New York Magazine

CRITICS’ PICK, FIVE STARS “Gorgeous. Stephen Karam boldly forces us into a world beyond the familiar.” —Adam Feldman, Time Out New York