Congratulations to Alyssa Haddad-Chin, winner of the 2025 Blue Ink Award for You Should Be So Lucky.
As part of the award, Haddad-Chin receives a $3,000 cash prize, a staged reading directed by Helen Young at American Blues Theater on August 9, and the opportunity to further develop her script with our artists.
Haddad-Chin notes, “I am truly humbled and honored to receive the Blue Ink Award for Playwriting. You Should Be So Lucky is inspired by my grandmother-in-law, and is a dedication to all communities, from Chinatown to Palestine, who hold firm in the face of displacement. And yet, in spite of that examination which may seem so overwhelming and heavy, it’s ultimately a play about two people searching for ways to connect. I’m so grateful for this recognition, which is a true game changer for me and for this piece, and it will allow me to continue to develop and share it far and wide. To borrow a quote from the play: we’re still here, and we’re not going anywhere.”
“We’re honored to name Alyssa Haddad-Chin’s play You Should Be So Lucky as the 2025 Blue Ink Award for playwriting. Alyssa’s timely and poignant depiction of the family relationships and struggles immediately captured our hearts. We’re excited to present the staged reading, directed by incredible Chicago theater maker Helen Young, this summer as part of our Blue Ink Playwriting Festival,” comments Executive Artistic Director Gwendolyn Whiteside.
About You Should Be So Lucky
Poh Poh teaches her granddaughter, Jenny, to make dumplings for the Lunar New Year in her Chinatown apartment. As Jenny learns more about her culture, history, and family, she discovers that there are some secrets Poh Poh won’t share, and the changing neighborhood isn’t leaving space for them.
About Alyssa Haddad-Chin
Alyssa Haddad-Chin (she/her) is a Lebanese American, playwright, educator and arts facilitator. She is a 2024-’25 Target Margin Theater Institute Fellow, commissioned by Keen Company for their 2024-’25 Keen Teens series, and a 2025 artist at the Mercury Store. Her play, The Newlywed Game, won B Street Theatre’s 2023 New Comedies Festival and received its World Premiere in June 2024. Other plays include The Ancestry Dot Com Play (Developed with The Playwrights Realm, Premiere Stages at Kean, Art House Productions), Off-White; Or the Arab House Party Play (Developed with New York Theater Workshop, Backstitch Story Arts). She has been a finalist for American Blues Theater Blue Ink Award, Leah Ryan Award, Amphibian SparkFest, The Playwright’s Realm, Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, Ensemble Studio Theatre Youngblood and a semi-finalist for American Blues Theater Blue Ink Award, Rattlestick Theater Terrence McNally New Works Incubator, Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Princess Grace Award, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, and others. She is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a Resident Artist at Breaking and Entering Theater Collective, and the Company and Community Manager at Target Margin Theater. A collection of her short plays, And Now a Little Something for the Ladies (among others), is published with 1319 Press. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Other 2025 Blue Ink Winners
Featured Finalists: Erlina Ortiz (She Wore Those Shoes), LaDarrion Williams (Hurt People).
Finalists: Robert Axelrod (Lifeline), Lee Blessing (The Murders), Aaron Coleman (Uncle Remus, His Life and Times, As Told to Aaron Coleman), Kimberly Dixon-Mays (Equal & Terrifying), Madeline Easley (Feast for the Dead), Enid Graham (Tenderness and Gratitude Number Four), Shannon TL Kearns (The Stories We Tell At The End Of The World), Jarrett King (St. Miles), Drew Larimore (Upstate), Tracey Conyer Lee (Retreat), Wendy MacLeod (Out of Office), Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj (waiting: a queer black comedy in two acts), Gloria Majule (Fifteen Hundred), Forest Malley (For You, The Same), Josephine Nericcio (The Texas Ocean), Matthew Paul Olmos (Richie never slept, was always up, moving around at night), Mary Lynn Owen (Salvage), Edwin Rivera-Arias (Stubbornness & Bone), Omer Abbas Salem (Pretty Shahid), Christopher G. Smith (Painted Desert), Dominic Taylor (Mrs. Jackson Investigates), James Anthony Tyler (hop thA A).
Semi-finalists: Mardee Bennett (The Highlands), Sophie Brion Neely (Los Pobladores), Audrey Cefaly (The Garment), Kate Cortesi (Ten Grand), Emily Everett (sorry sorry okay sorry), Zachariah Ezer (The Single Raindrop), Dominic Finocchiaro (angel’s share), Amina Henry (When The Other Mary Celeste Sank: A Strange and Umweltian Tale), Roger Holzberg (The Trial of Mother Jones), Lindsay Joelle (Achilles at Gitmo), M.J. Kang (James & Eddie), Aly Kantor (Blowhole), Lisa Kenner Grissom (here comes the night), Zizi Majid (Milk), Nick Malakhow (The Defectors), Cha Mangan (dragoness), Eric Marlin (Shot List), Mel Nieves (Frederick Douglass and The Fallen Angels), Phanésia Pharel (Dead Girl’s Quinceañera), Tlaloc Rivas (Crayon Sun), Caridad Svich (The Next One Hundred Years), Jesús Valles (a river, its mouths), Hope Villanueva (Buzz), Deborah Yarchun (Variations of Crossing the Alps), Dylan Zwickel (The Smuggler, or A New Jane).
About the Blue Ink Award for Playwriting
The nationally-renowned Blue Ink Award was created in 2010 to support new work. Since inception, we’ve named 15 Award winners, 172 finalists, and 258 semi-finalists. Over $10,000 in cash and prizes will be distributed to playwrights in 2025.
Each year American Blues Theater accepts worldwide submissions of original, unpublished full-length plays. The winning play will be selected by Executive Artistic Director Gwendolyn Whiteside and the theater’s Ensemble. The 2025 winning playwright receives a monetary prize of $3,000. Cash prizes are awarded to finalists and semi-finalists too. All proceeds of the administrative fee are distributed for playwrights’ cash prizes.
Submissions for the 2026 Blue Ink Award open August 1, 2025. All submissions must be received by American Blues Theater by August 31, 2024 at 11:59pm. Playwrights may only submit one (1) manuscript each year for consideration.