The Whiting Award is presented to Shayok Misha Chowdhury.

April 20 :
Shayok Misha Chowdhury, a playwright based in Brooklyn who was born in India, was one of 10 rising writers from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and theatre to receive the Whiting Award. The drama category was won by Misha Chowdhury's bilingual debut play "Public Obscenities." The piece follows a PhD student in queer studies as he and his Black American lover return to their family home in Kolkata.

Winner Shayok Misha Chowdhury "writes with ruthless splendour and inventiveness about the borders of language, sexuality, the public self and the hidden life," said the award's selection committee.

With a deftness of touch seldom witnessed on American theatres, he conjures out wildly spectacular works from everyday life. Written in both Bangla and English, his first play is a glimmer of homage and allusion that is also very much in the here and now.
Misha Chowdhury will get a grant of US50,000 from the Whiting Foundation, which is one of the biggest sums given to writers in their early careers, as part of the award.

"Public Obscenities" by Misha Chowdhury, a writer and director who won an Obie, was selected as a New York Times Critic's Pick and was included in The New Yorker's Best Theatre of 2023. Among his other cherished creations are the experimental short film Englandbashi and the performance memoir MukhAgni.

In addition to being a Kundiman Fellow, Sundance, and Fulbright Fellow, he has won several awards for his musicals "How the White Girl Got Her Spots" and "Other 90s Trivia," including the Princess Grace Award, the Mark O'Donnell Prize, a Jonathan Larson Grant, and the Relentless Award.