<P> Miranda also wrote the book, music and lyrics for another Broadway musical, Hamilton . The show earned the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and was nominated for a record - setting 16 Tony Awards, of which it won 11, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book . For his performance in the lead role of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda was nominated for another Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical . The Hamilton cast recording spent ten weeks atop Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart in 2015, while The Hamilton Mixtape, an album of covers of songs from the musical, developed by and featuring Miranda, reached number one on the Billboard 200 upon release in December 2016 . </P> <P> Miranda was born in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, the son of Luz Towns, a clinical psychologist, and Luis A. Miranda, Jr., a Democratic Party consultant who advised New York City mayor Ed Koch . Miranda has one older sister, Luz, who is the Chief Financial Officer of the MirRam Group . He grew up in the Latino neighborhood of Inwood, but he spent a month every year in his grandparents' home town, Vega Alta, in Puerto Rico . He is of mostly Puerto Rican descent . His mother's ancestors include an interracial couple, Sophie, who was black, and David Towns, who was white; from the early 1800s, this couple spent their married life trying to outrun slavery as laws and governments changed around them . Ensuing branches of the Towns family primarily married Mexican spouses in Texas and Mexico, and Miranda, for his part, has described his ancestry as a quarter Mexican . The name "Lin - Manuel" was inspired by a poem about the Vietnam War, Nana roja para mi hijo Lin Manuel, by the Puerto Rican writer José Manuel Torres Santiago . </P> <P> As a child, Miranda wrote jingles, including one later used for Eliot Spitzer's 2006 gubernatorial campaign . After attending Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School, Miranda graduated from Wesleyan University in 2002 . During his time there, he co-founded a hip hop comedy troupe called Freestyle Love Supreme . He wrote the earliest draft of In the Heights in 1999, his sophomore year of college . After the show was accepted by Second Stage, Wesleyan's student theater company, Miranda added "freestyle rap...and salsa numbers ." Second Stage premiered it in 1999 . Miranda wrote and directed several other musicals at Wesleyan and acted in many other productions, ranging from musicals to Shakespeare . He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Wesleyan University in 2015 . </P> <P> In 2002, Miranda and John Buffalo Mailer worked with director Thomas Kail to revise In the Heights . Book writer Quiara Alegría Hudes joined the team in 2004 . After success off - Broadway, the musical went to Broadway, opening in March 2008 . It was nominated for 13 Tony Awards, winning four, including Best Musical and Best Original Score . It also won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album . Miranda's performance in the leading role of Usnavi earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical . Miranda left the cast of the Broadway production on February 15, 2009 . </P>

When did lin manuel miranda start writing in the heights