In the Heights Virtual Book Launch

In Conversation

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  Lin-Manuel Miranda

  Lin-Manuel Miranda

  A Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, Tony Award-winning composer, lyricist, and actor, Lin-Manuel is the creator and original star of Broadway’s Hamilton and In the Heights, and the recipient of the 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award and 2018 Kennedy Center Honors. He has been an active supporter of relief efforts in Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria. He lives with his family in NYC.

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  Quiara Alegría Hudes

  Quiara Alegría Hudes

  Quiara Alegría Hudes is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Water By the Spoonful; author of a memoir, My Broken Language; and screenwriter for In the Heights and Vivo. Previously, she wrote the book (aka script) for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical In the Heights along with other plays and musicals that have been produced around the world. Her notable essays include “High Tide of Heartbreak” in American Theater magazine and Corey Couldn’t Take It Anymore in the Cut. In opposition of the carceral state, Hudes and her cousin founded Emancipated Stories, a platform where people behind bars can share one page of their life story with the world. As a barrio feminist and joyous mischief maker, Quiara y su hermana created the Latinx Casting Manifesto. A passionate wife and mom, Hudes is a native of West Philly, U.S.A., and now lives with her family in Washington Heights, NY (on unceded Munsee Lenape land).

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  Jeremy McCarter

  Jeremy McCarter

  Jeremy McCarter is a writer and producer. He is the founder and executive producer of Make-Believe Association, a nonprofit audio production company. He co-wrote (with Natalie Moore) and executive-produced City on Fire: Chicago Race Riot 1919, an audio docudrama about the summer that ravaged and remade the city. It was co-produced by Make-Believe Association and WBEZ, and won the Headliner Award for Best in Show for radio broadcasts in 2019. He is the author of Young Radicals, a story of idealistic Americans fighting for their ideals, which the Wall Street Journal called “brilliant, even inspiring.” He is the co-author of Hamilton: The Revolution, with Lin-Manuel Miranda, a #1 New York Times bestseller.

  He spent five years on the artistic staff of the Public Theater in New York, where he created and ran the Public Forum series. These performances and conversations featured many of America’s leading actors, writers, activists, and community leaders, exploring the intersection of arts and society. He has written about culture and politics for New York magazine, Newsweek, and the New York Times. He wrote the introduction to the 2020 reissue of Thornton Wilder’s novel The Ides of March and the liner notes for the cast recording of the 2005 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company.

  He participated in the Obama Foundation Summit of civic leaders in 2017. He also served on the jury of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He directed radio plays that opened for The Magnetic Fields on one of the band’s national tours. He studied history at Harvard, and lives in Chicago.