Pulitizer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, who announced that he was suffering from inoperable liver cancer five weeks ago, died October 2 at the age of 60, according to the Associated Press.
"It's not like poker, you can't throw your hand in," Wilson told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in late August. "I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready." Wilson's personal assistant Dena Levitin told the AP that Wilson died at Swedish Hospital in Seattle surrounded by his family.
Born April 27, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilson was one of the most acclaimed playwrights in modern theater, best known for his epic 10-play cycle chronicling the black experience in 20th Century America. 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.
Wilson's work has garnered many awards, including Pulitzer Prizes for Fences 1987 and The Piano Lesson 1990, a Tony Award for Fences, an Olivier Award for Jitney and seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. Wilson has also received many fellowships and awards, including Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships in Playwriting, the Whiting Writers Award, the 1999 National Humanities Medal presented by the President of the United States and numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Radio Golf, his latest play, premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in April and had a subsequent production at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum.
