Erika Dickerson-Despenza wins 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Her play is about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. April 8, 2021 The winner of the 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has been awarded, honoring the writing of female playwrights. This year’s winner is Erika Dickerson-Despenza with cullud wattah, a new work exploring three generations of Black women living through the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. “I wrote cullud wattah to explore the politics of disgust, shame and refusal by highlighting the rupture of government intervention at the intersection of capitalism and environmental racism” says Dickerson-Despenza. She continued to say “I wrote this play specifically for black women on the margins of the margins. Poor and working class black women, single mothers, elders and widows, black women in recovery, and queer black girls.”