She has won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation,[1] and is the recipient of a 2019 Lilly Award, which recognizes extraordinary women in theatre.
In 2021 she was honored with the Legacy Playwrights Initiative Award by the Dramatists Guild Foundation, for her sustained achievement, enduring excellence and influence on the American theater.
[3][4] Her most well-known plays and adaptations include: Tales of the Lost Formicans, Casanova, Lips, Losing Father's Body, The Misanthrope, A Mother, No Mercy, The Servant of Two Masters, Tartuffe and Paradise Street.
[5] She has written a number of opera libretti and seven plays for the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis.
[6][7] Her playwriting career includes an adaptation of Maxim Gorky's A Mother with Olympia Dukakis in the lead role.