In a Friday evening ceremony held in the Saybrook College library, Nicole Davis ’13 was awarded the inaugural Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting.

The award was established in memory of Marina Keegan ’12, the prolific playwright who authored “Independents” and “Utility Monster” at Yale and passed away in a car accident shortly after graduation. It is the first award for undergraduate playwriting to be created at the school.

The event was attended by friends and teachers of both writers, and featured readings of scenes from Davis’s play “23” as well as “Utility Monster.” The scenes read from each play were humorous ones, said writing professor Anne Fadiman, who spoke at the event. Keegan’s parents and playwriting professors Donald Margulies and Deb Margolin also gave remarks at the ceremony.

“It looked both forward and back,” Fadiman said. “Although there were some moist eyes there was also a lot of laughter in the library.”

Saybrook Master Paul Hudak also presented a plaque funded by the Saybrook Master’s Office to memorialize Keegan, which will be hung in the main reading room of the library. It features a quote from Keegan’s essay “The Opposite of Loneliness,” which was published in a special edition of the News’ last May. The quote is below:

“We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness,
but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.
What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale,
and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up
tomorrow and leave this place.”