We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
August Wilson, one of America’s greatest playwrights, died Saturday night in Seattle. The Pittsburgh-born Wilson was diagnosed with liver cancer in May and told he had only months to live. He was 60 years old.
A prolific writer who created memorable characters and colorful, highly descriptive dialogue, he authored a ten-play cycle which chronicled the African-American experience in America during each decade of the 20th Century, using his hometown as the setting. Almost all of them were ultimately produced on Broadway. The plays in the cycle include Jitney, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf, his final production, for which he had been making revisions at the onset of his terminal illness.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has followed his illustrious career from the beginning and has a special section that may serve as the best research on his life anywhere.
Almost all of his plays are available in book form, as are other essays and books on the art of playwrighting he has written.
2 comments ↓
I loved his words and his words loved, nurtured and taught me.
He will definitely be missed. It’s a sad day in the literary world.