Search results
August Wilson was an award-winning Black American playwright and poet most famous for his ten-play American Century Cycle. Nine plays of The American Century Cycle are set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and they focus on the struggles of working-class Black Americans in different decades.
Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel Jr. in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the fourth of six children. His father, Frederick August Kittel Sr., was a Sudeten German immigrant, who was a baker/pastry cook.
Jan 24, 2024 · Famed playwright August Wilson wrote his first play, Jitney, in 1979. Fences earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award in 1987. Wilson won another Pulitzer Prize in 1990, for The Piano Lesson ...
- editor@biography.com
- Staff Editorial Team And Contributors
Sep 28, 2024 · August Wilson was a playwright who penned an acclaimed cycle of plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, about Black American life. He won Pulitzer Prizes for two of them: Fences and The Piano Lesson. Learn more about Wilson’s life and works in this article.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- August Wilson’s Childhood
- August Wilson’s Artistic Development
- August Wilson’s Century Play Cycle
- August Wilson’s Legacy
- August Wilson Timeline
Wilson’s rise from humble beginnings to Broadway was unlikely. Born Frederick August Kittel on April 27, 1945, in the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, he was the son of Daisy Wilson, an African-American cleaning woman, and Frederick Kittel, a German immigrant and baker who was mostly absent from Wilson’s life. His mother raised Wilson and his...
Wilson had begun writing plays — one a musical western — before relocating to Minneapolis. There he was given a fellowship to the Minnesota Playwrights Center, which led to his acceptance into the National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. During the conference — an intense collaboration of artists testing new wor...
Wilson’s greatest contribution to American culture would be his defining 10-play cycle, one for each decade of the past century. All but one — Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom— set in the city of Pittsburgh: 1900: Gem of the Ocean (2002) 1910: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986) 1920: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) 1930: The Piano Lesson (1989) 1940: Seven ...
In the late 90s, with a career spanning nearly two decades, Wilson married his third wife, costume designer Constanza Romero. The two had a daughter and moved to Seattle, WA, where Wilson continued to work on the last plays in the cycle. In June 2005, Wilson was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. He died Sunday, October 2, 2005, in a Seattle hos...
April 27, 1945– Frederick August Kittel is born in Pittsburgh, PA, in the city neighborhood known as “The Hill.” The Hill is Pittsburgh’s Harlem, a hub of creativity and commerce, and in 1945, still racially mixed. His mother, Daisy Wilson, was African-American, while his father, a German immigrant named Frederick Kittel, was white. He is one of se...
One of six children, playwright August Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. His father was a German immigrant who abandoned the family when August was young; his mother was an African American who cleaned houses.
People also ask
Who was August Wilson?
When did August Wilson write a play?
What did August Wilson do before he died?
Did August Wilson win a Pulitzer Prize?
How old was August Wilson when he became a poet?
Why did August Kittel change his name to August Wilson?
Oct 2, 2005 · Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker.
