August Wilson Dead
Playwright August Wilson, whose epic 10-play cycle chronicling the black experience in 20th-century America included such landmark dramas as “Fences†and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,†died Sunday of liver cancer, a family spokeswoman said. He was 60.
August Wilson died at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, surrounded by his family, said Dena Levitin, Wilson’s personal assistant. The playwright had disclosed in late August that his illness was inoperable and he had only a few months to live.
His plays were big, often sprawling and poetic, dealing primarily with the effects of slavery on succeeding generations of black Americans: from turn-of-century characters who could remember the Civil War to a prosperous middle class at the end of the century who had forgotten the past.
As Seattlest points out here is a fine biography of August Wilson.
Source: MSNBC.
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