Sophie Boyce and Veronica Mansour have won the 21st Annual Fred Ebb Award.

Awarded by the Fred Ebb Foundation for aspiring musical theatre songwriters, the award will be presented to the duo by Christopher Sieber on December 1 at a by-invitation-only ceremony at 54 Below.

The Fred Ebb Award recognizes excellence in musical theatre songwriting, by a songwriter or songwriting team that has not yet achieved significant commercial success. The award is meant to encourage and support aspiring songwriters to create new works for the musical theatre. The prize includes a $60,000 award. The Fred Ebb Foundation is funded by royalties from Mr. Ebb’s vast catalogue of work. 

Past winners include John Bucchino (2005); Steve Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman (2006); Peter Mills (2007); Adam Gwon(2008); Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich (2009); Douglas J. Cohen (2010); Jeff Blumenkrantz (2011); Sam Willmott (2012); Michael Kooman andChristopher Dimond (2013); Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen (2014); Stacey Luftig and Phillip Palmer (2015); Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore (2016); Shaina Taub (2017); Will Reynolds and Eric Price (2018); Angela Sclafani and Benjamin Velez (2019); Ben Bonnema and Christopher Staskel and Michael R. Jackson (2020); Isabella Dawis and Tidtaya Sinutoke (2021); Julia Riew (2022); Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams (2023); and Cheeyang Ng and Eric Sorrels (2024).

The 2025 selection panel comprises Foundation Trustee Mitchell S. Bernard, actor Jonathan Burke, music director David Loud, and actor Maria-Christine Oliveras. Each year, the Foundation also makes a donation to Broadway Cares.

Boyce is a lyricist and librettist, originally from London. She has most recently been honored as a Dramatist Guild Fellow, Richard Rodgers Award winner, Eric H. Weinberger Librettist Award winner, Eugene O’Neill NMTC winner, and finalist for the Kleban Prize. She has an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU and is alum of the BMI Bookwriters Workshop. For more information on her work, visit SophieBoyce.net.

Mansour is a composer, lyricist, and artist. She is a two-time Richard Rodgers Award winner, Jonathan Larson Grant winner, Eric H. Weinberger Librettist Award winner, Dramatists Guild fellow, recent nominee for a Marvin Hamlisch International Music Award, one of four writers selected for the DreamWorks Theatricals, MTI and NBCUniversal Emerging Writers Program (composer and co-lyricist for How to Train Your Dragon Jr.), and one of three 2023 Write Out Loud contest winners for her song “Runaway Girl” (written with abs wilson). Mansour’s work has been developed with the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Goodspeed Musicals, The Orchard Project, New York Theatre Barn, the South Carolina New Play Festival, Musical Theatre West, Syracuse University, Manhattan School of Music, St. Olaf College, Millikin University, the University of Notre Dame, and more. Mansour is also an accomplished cellist and vocalist, having studied for many years at the Colburn School and the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. She is a proud member of Maestra, the Dramatists Guild, and BMI. She holds an MFA in Graduate Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. For more information on her work, visit VeronicaMansour.com.