Alice Childress  (1920-1994) Wine in the Wilderness LINKS African-American Playwrights: Alice Childress http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~cybers/childress.html A brief biographical site on Childress is included as part of the Women of Color, Women of Words Web site, dedicated to African American women playwrights, maintained at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University. BIOGRAPHY Childress, born in Charleston, South Carolina, was taken to Harlem at age nine to live with her maternal grandmother after her parents separated. After completing her education in the public schools of New York, she began a career in the theater as actor, director, and playwright. Her plays include Florence (1949), Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White (1972), Mojo: A Black Love Story (1970), and Moms: A Praise Play for a Black Comedienne (1987). Besides plays, Childress has written a number of novels, among them Those Other People (1989) and A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (1973). She also wrote the screenplay for the 1978 film based on A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich. She has received numerous awards and honors for her writings, among them the first Paul Robeson Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Performing Arts. Childress has described her writing as an attempt "to interpret the ‘ordinary’ because they are not ordinary. Each human is uniquely different.... I concentrate on portraying have-nots in a have society, those seldom singled out by mass media, except as source material for derogatory humor and/or condescending clinical, social analysis."