Richard Nelson's plays include
Farewell to the Theatre, Nikolai and the Others, Sweet and Sad, That Hopey Changey Thing, Conversations in Tusculum, How Shakespeare Won the West, Frank's Home, Rodney's wife, Franny's Way, Madame Melville, Goodnight Children Everywhere, The General From America, New England, Misha's Party (with Alexander Gelman),
Columbus or the Discovery of Japan,
Two Shakespearean Actors, Some Americans Abroad, Left, Life Sentences, Principia Scriptoriae.
He was written the musicals
Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano (with Peter Golub),
James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey),
My Life With Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon), the screenplays for the films
Hyde Park-on-Hudson (Roger Michell director) and
Ethan Frome (John Madden director).
He has received numerous awards both in America and abroad, including a Tony Award (Best Book of a Musical for
James Joyce's The Dead), and Oliver Award (Best Play for
Goodnight Children Everywhere), Tony nominations (Best Play for
Two Shakespearean Actors; Best Score as co-lyricist for
James Joyce's The Dead), an Olivier nomination (Best Comedy for
Some Americans Abroad), two Obies, a Lortel Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Writers Award.
He is the recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He lives in upstate New York.