“As I try to come to grips with the lack of control I have in terms of my own visibility and commercial success within the American Theater, I remain convinced that I have control in terms of how I see my identity. How I Learned to Drive gave me that gift. It felt as if the play was rewriting me, and I will always remember the sensation of lightness I had in the middle of the night as I wrote it. This is the gift of theater and of writing: a transubstantiation of pain and secrecy into light, into community, into understanding if not acceptance.” — Paula Vogel, from her Preface

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive is widely recognized as a masterpiece of contemporary drama. It is published here for the first time as a stand-alone edition. Paula Vogel is the author of Indecent, The Baltimore Waltz, The Long Christmas Ride Home, Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq and A Civil War Christmas, among many other plays. She has held a distinguished career as a teacher and mentor to young playwrights, first at Brown University and then at the Yale School of Drama.