Quiara Alegria Hudes, a writer of Puerto Rican origin, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama with her play, “Water by the Spoonful,” Columbia University said.

Hudes, daughter of a Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother, was awarded $10,000 for a play that reflects the return to civilian life of an Iraq War veteran.

The jury of the 96th annual Pulitzer Prizes wished to honor the “imaginative play” that Hudes wrote and that is set in her native Philadelphia.

“Water by the Spoonful” was produced last fall at the Stage Company in Hartford, Connecticut.

Hudes, who earned a bachelor’s in music from Yale University and an M.F.A. in play writing from Brown University, wrote the book for the Tony-winning Broadway musical “In the Heights.”

She was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer with “Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue” and is also the creator of other musicals like “Barrio Grrrl!”, which premiered in 2009 at Washington’s Kennedy Center.