Theatre & dance / Literature
Lydia R. Diamond
born 1969 · playwright, professor
Detroit-born playwright of Stick Fly (2008), The Bluest Eye adaptation and Smart People, and winner of the 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 57- Birth name
- Lydia Gartin
- Detroit years
- 1969–1970s
- Field
- Theatre & dance, Literature
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Diamond was born Lydia Gartin in Detroit in April 1969. After her parents divorced when she was three, she was raised mainly by her mother, a musician and educator, and the family moved often, to Amherst, Massachusetts, Carbondale, Illinois, and Waco, Texas, where she finished high school. She studied theater at Northwestern University, switched from acting to playwriting, and built her career in Chicago's theater scene before moving to New England. Her stage adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (2007) and her comedy of manners Stick Fly (2008), about an affluent Black family on Martha's Vineyard, which reached Broadway in 2011, established her nationally; Harriet Jacobs (2011) and Smart People (2016) followed. She has taught playwriting at Boston University and other colleges, and received the Lorraine Hansberry Award and the Dramatists Guild's Horton Foote Award.
Highlights
- Born in Detroit in 1969
- Adapted Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye for the stage (2007)
- Stick Fly (2008) reached Broadway in 2011
- 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild