Impact & Influence

Biography

Major Works

Scholarly Works

Audio/Video

Impact & Influence

Wilson is widely known for his series of ten plays, called the "Pittsburgh Cycle" or the "Century Cycle," as each play focuses on one decade in the 20th century. Setting the collection in his boyhood neighborhood, the Hill District, Wilson tracked the Black experience over the course of 100 years. Throughout the series, his characters often struggled with both mental and social challenges. Although he wrote a number of plays before gaining critical success, including Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, it wasn't until 1984 that Wilson struck literary gold. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was highly praised, and voted Best Play of the Year by the New York Drama Critics' Circle, a prize he would win five more times. He also went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play twice and a Tony Award for his highly acclaimed Fences.

Other accolades Wilson has received include: the Whiting Foundation Award in 1986; the Outer Circle Award in 1987; the John Gassner Award in 1987; the Helen Hayer Award in 1988; the Literary Lion Award from the New York Public Library in 1988; the American Theatre Critics' Association Award in 1992 for Two Trains Running; the National Humanities Medal in 1999; the Olivier Award for Best New Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play for Jitney; the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival Freedom of Speech Award in 2004; and the Make Shift Award at the U.S. Confederation of Play Writers in 2005. Wilson was also awarded an honorary doctorate of Humanities from the University of Pittsburgh and an honorary degree from Carnegie Library, and he was honored posthumously when the Virginia Theatre in New York changed its name to the August Wilson Theatre, making it the only Broadway theater named after an African-American.

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Biography

Born in 1945 as Frederick August Kittel Jr., in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August Wilson knew poverty at an early age, living with his mother and five siblings above a grocery store. It also wasn't long before he knew racism, after moving as a teenager to a white, working class neighborhood when his mother remarried. He was the only African-American student at his high school, where he encountered threats and abuse, causing him to leave and try two other schools before eventually dropping out in 10th grade. After a short stint in the U.S. Army and working as a playwright in Pittsburgh for a number of years, Wilson moved to St. Paul in 1978 to write educational scripts for the Science Museum of Minnesota. He also began a long association with Penumbra Theatre Company and received a fellowship with the Minneapolis Playwrights' Center. He left in 1994 for Seattle, where he worked with the Seattle Repertory Theatre and died of lung cancer in 2005. He was married three times and fathered two daughters.

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Major Works

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1982)
Jitney (1982)
Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984)
Fences (1985)
The Piano Lesson (1989)
Two Trains Running (1990)
Seven Guitars (1995)
King Hedley II (2001)
Gem of the Ocean (2003)
Radio Golf (2005)

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Scholarly Works

African American Writers, Valerie Smith, editor in chief
August Wilson: a Literary Companion, Mary Ellen Snodgrass
I Ain't Sorry for Nothin' I Done: August Wilson's Process of Playwriting, by Joan Herrington
Playwrights at Work: The Paris Review, edited by George Plimpton

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Audio/Video

Sorry, none available at this time.

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