MEDIA ADVISORY: First Marina Keegan award for playwriting to be given at Yale ceremony

A ceremony presenting the Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting to Nicole Davis, its first recipient, will take place on Friday, April 26 at 5 p.m. in the library of Saybrook College, 242 Elm St.

The award honors Marina Keegan ’12, the playwright, essayist, fiction writer, and activist, who tragically died in a car accident only days after she graduated with high honors from Yale College.

This event is open to the Yale community. Members of the news media wishing to attend should contact Ann-Marie Apicella by email or by phone 203-432-0532.

A celebration of Keegan’s life and creative spirit, the event is timed to take place while many of her friends, notably in this year’s graduating class, are still on campus. Her parents Tracy and Kevin Keegan, and three of her Yale teachers and mentors—Anne Fadiman, Donald Margulies, and Deb Margolin —will also offer remarks

As a senior at Yale, Keegan, first gained national recognition for a column she wrote in DealBook on The New York Times website warning her fellow students to avoid the lure of investment bank recruiters.

Keegan wrote several plays. Her musical, “Independence,” was chosen by the New York International Fringe festival for a full-scale production.

Another play by Keegan, “Utility Monster,” will be performed May 25–June 22 at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater in Keegan’s hometown on Cape Cod.

Keegan was to have taken a position on the editorial staff of The New Yorker. The magazine posthumously published her short story “Cold Pastoral,” about a college student confronting the sudden death of her boyfriend.

Perhaps Keegan’s most memorable work is “The Opposite of Loneliness,” a piece she wrote for classmates on the eve of their graduation.

The event on Friday will feature readings from “Utility Monster,” and from the play “23,” by Davis.