Kushner is perhaps best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning epic about AIDS,"Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," described by Newsweek as the "broadest, deepest, most searching American play of our time." His most recent work, "Homebody/Kabul," was written prior to the September 11 attacks. It was described by the New York Times as an "eerily prophetic" play about Afghanistan. "Homebody/Kabul" opened in December at the New York Theatre Workshop and is currently on tour.
In addition to a Pulitzer Prize, "Angels in America" received two Tony Awards, the Evening Standard Award, the New York Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, two Olivier Award Nominations, and the LAMBDA Literary Award for Drama. In 1998, London's National Theatre selected "Angels in America" as one of the 10 best of the 20th century.
Kushner's other plays include "Hydriotaphia," "A Bright Room Called Day," "Slavs!: Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness," and adaptations of Goethe's "Stella," Brecht's "The Good Person of Setzuan," Ansky's "The Dybbuk," and Corneille's "The Illusion."
Kushner's current projects, in addition to "Homebody/Kabul," include "Henry Box Brown or the Mirror of Slavery" and two musical plays, "St. Cecelia or the Power of Music" and "Caroline or Change." He is collaborating with Maurice Sendak on an American version of the children's opera "Brundibar." His most recent book is "Death & Taxes: Hydriotaphia and other Plays."
He has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whiting Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he also received a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fellowship, and a medal for Cultural Achievement from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.