Wegrzyn will be awarded with a $25,000 prize and her selected play, Hickorydickory, will receive a reading at Second Stage Theatre in New York. Tony Award-winning scenic designer Heidi Ettinger and TDF executive director Victoria Bailey will present the honor.

Established in 2006 by the Dramatists Guild of America and the Educational Foundation of America in the memory of the late Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, the Wasserstein Prize is presented annually to a woman who has not yet received national attention for her work as a playwright. TDF has also joined to administer the prize for 2009.

"I'm thrilled to win the Wasserstein Prize for Hickorydickory," Wegrzyn said in a statement. "I can take a break from worrying about the rent and get back to writing. If it helps get the script into the right hands, that would be tremendous. Either way, it's incredibly generous and encouraging."

Wegrzyn described Hickorydickory as "a sentimental play. It's violently sentimental. Sweet and bloody and funny. The fantasy at the heart of the story – that we all have a clock inside that tells us the time of our death – is something I think about in that 'what if' way. What if I could know exactly when I was going to die? Would I even want to know that? What would I do with my time knowing exactly how much was left? My time is finite but how finite? Those questions drive me mad."

Previous Wasserstein Prize recipients are Linda Ramsey (2007) and Laura Jacqmin (2008) for their plays, The Feather House and And when we awoke there was light and light, respectively.