An acclaimed playwright, Rapp was a 2006 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Red Light Winter. Further playwriting honors include Boston’s Elliot Norton Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the 2006 Princess Grace Statue Award, a Lucille Lortel Playwright’s Fellowship, and the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, Rapp was honored with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award.
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Rapp is also the author of a number of young adult novels, including Under the Wolf,Under the Dog, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and winner of the Schneider Family Book Award; 33 Snowfish, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults; and Punkzilla, which was named a 2010 Michael L. Printz Honor Book. Additionally, Rapp is the author of the upcoming adult novel Know Your Beholder (Little, Brown, 2015), the adult novel The Year of Endless Sorrows (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006), and the graphic novel Ball Peen Hammer (First Second Books, 2009).
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As a filmmaker, Rapp wrote and directed Winter Passing, starring Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell. He has begun production on the film version of Red Light Winter—starring Ben Foster and Olivia Wilde—which he adapted from his play. Scott Rudin is producing the movie.
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A graduate of Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, Rapp won the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting fellowship at Juilliard.