Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s “Hamilton” won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Columbia University-run organization announced on Monday.
The prize is awarded “for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life.”
In its citation, the Pulitzer committee described Miranda’s show about founding father Alexander Hamilton “a landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible.”
There is no separate musical category, and “Hamilton” becomes the first musical play to win the prize since “Next to Normal” in 2010.
The runners-up for this year’s prize were two non-musicals, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Gloria” and Stephen Karam’s “The Humans.”
The 2015 prize went to “Between Riverside and Crazy” by Stephen Adly Giurgis, and other notable winners have included “August: Osage County,” “Rabbit Hole” and “Driving Miss Daisy.”
Miranda already received the MacArthur Genius Grant for his work on “Hamilton.”
The hit musical following the life of Alexander Hamilton will open in Los Angeles in the summer of 2017.