Terrence McNally was awarded the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. He was the winner of Tony Awards for his plays Love! Valour! Compasion! and Master Class  and his books for the musicals Ragtime and Kiss of the Spiderwoman. In 2010 the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presented Terrence McNally's Nights at the Opera, a three-play festival of his work. His other plays include Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; Corpus Christi; A Perfect Ganesh; The Ritz, It's Only a Play; Some Men; Golden Age; Deuce; The Lisbon Traviata; Bad Habits; The Stendhal Syndrome; Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams; Next; Unusual Acts of Devotion; Sweet Eros; Witness; Where has Tommy Flowers Gone? and his first play... And the Things That Go Bump in the Night. He wrote the books for the musicals The Full Monty, A Man of No Importance, The Visit, and The Rink. He won an Emmy Award for Best Drama with his teleplay Andre's Mother. He wrote the screenplays for Frankie and Johnny, Love! Valour! Compassion! and The Ritz. He wrote the libretto for the opera Dead Man Walking with music by Jake Heggie.

His many awards included: Citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, four Drama Desk Awards, three Hull-Warriner Best Play Awards from the Dramatists Guild, two Obies, two Lortel Awards and two Guggenheim Fellowships. Mr. McNally was a member of the Dramatists Guild from 1965 and served as its Vice-President from 1985 to 2001.