By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, a new play by Lynn Nottage, had a successful Off-Broadway run at Second Stage Theatre (Lily Award, Drama Desk Nominee). This season, it will be performed at The Geffen Playhouse and The Goodman Theatre. Ruined (OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics' Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play) premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club and Goodman Theatre (OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics' Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play). It then toured extensively around regional theatres in the United States before making its international debut at London's Almeida Theatre. The drama has since been staged in Cambodia, Chad, the Caribbean, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Germany, among other places.

Intimate Apparel (Best Play, American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards); Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award); Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por'knockers and POOF! are among her other works. The 2010 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize for Best New American Play (Ruined), the Helen Hayes Award (Ruined), the Lee Reynolds Award, and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award have all been bestowed upon Nottage. She has also received fellowships from the Lucille Lortel Foundation, Manhattan Theatre Club, New Dramatists, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as the 2007 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, the August Wilson Playwriting Prize from the National Black Theatre Festival, the 2005 Guggenheim Grant for Playwriting, the 2004 PEN/Laura Pels Award for Drama, and the Lucille Lortel Foundation, Manhattan Theatre Club, New Dramatists, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She graduated from Brown University and is currently a visiting lecturer at Yale School of Drama.

She is a co-founder and producer of the film production business Market Road Films LLC. Theatre Communications Group, BRIC Arts Media Bklyn, Donor Direct Action, The New Black Fest, Voice and Vision, and the Dramatists Guild all have Nottage on their boards.