Brown's playwriting program is losing its long-standing director. Professor of Literary Arts Paula Vogel, a Pulitzer Prize winner, announced just before the start of the spring semester that she will move to Yale this summer.
Vogel has been appointed chair of the Department of Playwriting and the Eugene O'Neill professor of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama. Her appointment will last five years.
Vogel could not be reached for comment, but in an automated e-mail response she wrote, "All I can say is that I'm very proud of the work I've done at Brown, of my former and present students, and how much I've enjoyed being here." She continued, writing that her time at Brown has "flown by watching the new plays written by Brown writers."
"I feel like I've just about done everything I can do," Vogel told the New York Times in a Jan. 18 article.
Vogel, who won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for "How I Learned to Drive," spent 24 years at Brown.
She is "at the point where she is interested in trying something different," said Brian Evenson, director of the Literary Arts Program. "More than anything, she's been here a long time."
"Yale is a very different program," Evenson said. For one, it's bigger than Brown's program. "She'll be part of a very large drama program rather than part of a small creative writing department," Evenson wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
At Yale, Vogel will teach, hire faculty for the playwriting department and take charge of the curriculum, Yale School of Drama Dean James Bundy wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
"We were particularly focused on playwrights who were professionally distinguished and had significant teaching (experience)," Bundy wrote. "Paula has trained magnificent writers ... and the professional accomplishment of her former students is an indication that she both chooses them well and provides significant expertise to them."
"She's really great," Brendan Pelsue '08 said of Vogel. Though he's only recently started working with Vogel, Pelsue says she's been "very supportive" and is "clearly very involved with her students." He said he appreciates the attention she gives to each individual piece of writing.
J.D. Nasaw '08.5 agreed with Pelsue. "I can't speak highly enough of her," he said. "My personal interest and pursuit of writing has inalterably been changed by studying with her."
Brown will begin looking for Vogel's replacement in a few weeks, Evenson said. The search will be conducted "quickly and seriously," he said. Though the search has not really started yet, Evenson said the department has "put together some lists" of candidates.
