Lorca in a Green Dress

In 2003, Nilo Cruz became the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Anna in the Tropics, which also won the Steinberg Award for Best New Play. Cruz has won several other awards and fellowships, including two NEA/TCG National Theatre Residency grants, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. Cruz's plays have been produced at Victory Gardens, New York's Public Theatre, the New York Theatre Workshop, the Minneapolis Children's Theatre, the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Cruz has taught at the University of Iowa and Brown University.

Born in Cuba, Cruz's family immigrated to the "Little Havana" in Miami, Florida in 1970 on a Freedom Flight, and eventually naturalized to the United States. His interest in theater began with acting and directing in the early 1980s. He studied theater first at Miami-Dade Community College, later moving to New York City, where Cruz studied under fellow Cuban María Irene Fornes. Fornes recommended Cruz to Paula Vogel who was teaching at Brown University where he would later receive his M.F.A. in 1994.