Skip to content
  1. Free Shipping for Orders Over $150 in USA (apparel not included)

 253-627-4278

 info@hivoltagerecords.com

New Book August Wilson: A Life - Hartigan, Patti - Hardcover 9781501180668
Regular price $32.50

Shipping calculated at checkout

Low stock

Please note: While we do our best to insure that cover images are up to date, if you are looking for a specific cover, please send us an email to verify before purchasing.

August Wilson: A Life 
Contributor(s): Hartigan, Patti (Author)

Binding: Hardcover
Pub Date: August 15, 2023


The first authoritative biography of August Wilson, the most important and successful American playwright of the late 20th century, by a theater critic who knew him.

August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays celebrating African American life in the 20th century, one play for each decade. No other American playwright has completed such an ambitious oeuvre. Two of the plays became successful films, Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. Fences and The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Fences won the Tony Award for Best Play, and years after Wilson’s death in 2005, Jitney earned a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

Through his brilliant use of vernacular speech, Wilson developed unforgettable characters who epitomized the trials and triumphs of the African American experience. He said that he didn’t research his plays but wrote from “the blood’s memory,” a sense of racial history that he believed African Americans shared. Author and theater critic Patti Hartigan traced his ancestry back to slavery, and his plays echo with uncanny similarities to the history of his ancestors. She interviewed Wilson many times before his death and traces his life from his childhood in Pittsburgh (where nine of the plays take place) to Broadway. She also interviewed scores of friends, theater colleagues and family members, and conducted extensive research to tell the story of a writer who left an indelible imprint on American theater and opened the door for future playwrights of color.

x