Minnesota's Mikell Sapp and Isabel Nelson are among the six McKnight Award winners for 2025

When playwright Gemma Irish got a call that she had won the McKnight fellowship for playwrights, she was ecstatic.

She had applied six or seven times for the $25,000 prize, hoping that it will help lift her career and also buy time to make work.

"It's validating to be in the company of the great artists that have won," said Irish, who is working on a play called "Eat the Rich," a comedy about "people literally eating the rich after they run out of food."

The awards, administered by the Playwrights' Center, have supported those working in the performing arts for decades and have been a part of the ecosystem that's helped undergird Minnesota's artistic vitality.

Irish is one of several creative artists to win the McKnight. In all, the center is handing out $140,000 to five Minnesotans and one national artist. All the awardees also have access to a portion of another $50,000 for travel and research.

Mikell Sapp, who played the title character Blue earlier this year in Penumbra Theatre's "Paradise Blue," is another McKnight awardee.

"Financially, this is the first big award I've won, and it couldn't have come at a better time," Sapp said. "I got my career started here in 2011 in my first professional gig at Pillsbury House Theatre. And to be recognized by my peers, I couldn't be prouder."

For Isabel Nelson, co-founder and leader of TransAtlantic Love Affair company, winning a McKnight now is especially gratifying because of how her company works. TLA devises stories using dance, song and other forms to create haunting shows. Nelson's latest was "Red and the Mother Wild," which riffed on Little Red Riding Hood at Minneapolis' Center for Performing Arts.

"Our process takes a lot of time, so I'm not highly prolific in terms of number of shows," Nelson said. "I feel especially fortunate and grateful."

Other winners include sound designer Peter Morrow, who moved to Minnesota from Dublin, Ireland, in 2012, and has become a mainstay on the scene, and playwright Marge Buckley, who intends to complete a contemporary bedroom farce.

The center also announced Brooklyn-based playwright C.A. Johnson as its national playwright, which carries a $15,000 stipend. She will be adapting James Joyce's "The Dead" for the stage.

"These fellowships represent the full range of the center's commitment to supporting incredible playwrights and the artists who bring their words, and worlds, to life on stage," said Nicole A. Watson, producing artistic director of the Playwrights' Center. "Investing in artists is necessary and joyful work."