The Jersey City Independent "

Summer Dawn Hortillosa — journalist and playwright, short story writer and photographer — won her first award as a playwright at the 2007 the New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival when she was just 16-years old.

But five years is just shy of a quarter of your life when you’re only 22 years old, so it’s a good thing she won another award as a playwright yesterday, this time being presented with the prestigious Lavina Kohl Award in Literature from the NJ Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters.

“Winning the award was a great honor, but the most rewarding part was getting to act out and share my work and seeing other award recipients perform as well,” said Hortillosa, a staff writer for the Jersey City Independent.

“As an arts lover and journalist, I’m always super inspired and delighted to see talented singers, dancers and artists doing great work,” she continued.

Hortillosa was nominated for the award by Jim DeVivo, Director of Education at the Playwrights Theater of New Jersey, who wrote in his nominating letter that “Summer is one of the more dynamic alumna of our NJ Young Playwrights program.” He noted that she was both a guest blogger for the NJ Young Playwrights blog and read scripts for the 2012 NJ Young Playwrights Festival.

Hortillosa also participated as a panelist for an international conference DeVivo put together on the work of young playwrights at NYU this past spring.

The award was presented by former Jersey City resident and NJ-NSAL’s Literature head and poet Ed Benoit and comes with a $200 award.

In March, Hortillosa wrote and directed the dramatic play “Secrets; Love,” which had a successful run in Hoboken and at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival in SoHo. She read both a monologue from “Secrets; Love,” and her short story, “Something Inside That Head of Yours,” at the ceremony, which was held yesterday.

Hortillosa’s work can be found online here.