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August Wilson (né Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". [1]
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.
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Jan 24, 2024 · In 1981 Wilson married his second wife Judy Oliver. The pair divorced in 1990. In 1994, Wilson married for the third time, to a costume designer named Constanza Romero and had daughter,...
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August Wilson was born April 27, 1945, in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, a poor Black neighborhood. At birth, he bore his baker father’s name, Frederick August Kittel. His father was a German immigrant, known for his drinking and temper, and his mother, Daisy Wilson, was African American. She taught her son to stand up to injustice. His parents divorc...
By 20, Wilson decided that he would be a poet, but three years later he developed an interest in theater. In 1968, he and his friend Rob Penny started the Black Horizons on the Hill Theater. Lacking a place to perform, the theater company staged its productions at elementary schools and sold tickets for just 50 cents by herding in passersby outside...
Each of Wilson’s works describes the struggles of the Black underclass, be they sanitation workers, domestics, drivers, or criminals. Through his dramas, which span different decades of the 20th century, the voiceless have a voice. The plays expose the personal turmoil the marginalized endure because their humanity all too often goes unrecognized b...
Wilson died of liver cancer on October 2, 2005, at the age of 60 in a Seattle hospital. He had not announced that he was suffering from the disease until a month before his death. His third wife, costume designer Constanza Romero, three daughters (one with Romero and two with his first wife), and several siblings survived him. After he succumbed to...
- Nadra Kareem Nittle
August Wilson. Writer: Fences. August Wilson once dropped out of school, disillusioned after having been unjustly accused of plagiarism by a racist instructor who could not fathom the artistic and intellectual genius of a then young Black male writer.
- April 27, 1945
- October 2, 2005
Aug 14, 2023 · Hartigan, a former Boston Globe writer, met Wilson in 1987 at the Eugene O’Neill Art Center in Waterford, Connecticut and has written extensively on Wilson’s work over the years.
Nov 17, 2023. Summary Transcript. Our series Full Bio returns, and this month we are focusing on the life of pioneering playwright August Wilson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, and...
