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PRIZE WRITER Local playwright Marcus Youssef has won Canada’s richest and most prestigious theatre award. The Neworld Theatre artistic director has been named the recipient of the 2017 Siminovitch Prize, an award of $100,000, at a ceremony at the National Arts Centre. As part of the award, Vancouver theatre artist and Delinquent Theatre co–artistic director Christine Quintana, whom he has chosen as his protégée, will receive $25,000 out of the total amount. Youssef is best known for writing and cowriting Winners and Losers, King Arthur’s Night, Leftovers, How Has My Love Affected You?, Ali & Ali, Adrift, Peter Panties, Jabber, and A Line in the Sand. He had made it onto this year’s shortlist alongside Evelyne de la Chenelière, Hannah Moscovitch, and Donna-michelle St. Bernard. “The final deliberations were intense, but in awarding the Prize to Marcus Youssef, we were absolutely delighted to be able to celebrate a mid-career artist whose work was already of the highest calibre and was, in fact, changing the face of Canadian theatre,” said jury chair Bob White in the press announcement.