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August Wilson

Playwright; two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama

United States · 1945–2005

American dramatist best known for a ten-play cycle chronicling twentieth-century African American life, most of it set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh where he grew up. He left school at sixteen and educated himself in the local library. In 1968 he co-founded the Black Horizons Theater in Pittsburgh with Rob Penny.

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Question What is something you were told by a parent, teacher, or mentor that you still repeat to yourself?

I think he was expecting someone with a more strident tone and antagonistic demeanor. I think he was surprised to find out that I’m a pretty likable person, and that despite out different views I conducted myself with a civility and grace of manners my mother always demanded of me. For myself, I found him to be a more likable person than I had imagined. And I certainly value and respect the contributions that he has made to the theater; our differences of opinion on black theater do not dampen my respect and appreciation, nor in any way invalidate the considerable contributions that he has made.

Recorded Bonnie Lyons and George Plimpton, Interview conducted over lunch at the Sheraton Hotel’s Fourteenth Street Bar, Atlanta, The Paris Review, Issue 153, Winter 1999, 1999 source ↗

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