August Wilson  (b. 1945) Two Trains Running LINKS Bridges Web Services: August Wilson http://www.bridgesweb.com/wilson.html Part of a larger site on African American theater and culture, this page includes detailed biographical information along with information on productions of some of Wilson's plays. BIOGRAPHY August Wilson (b. 1945) Wilson was born in a Pittsburgh ghetto known as the Hill where he attended public schools. Disillusioned by the pervasive racism of several schools, he dropped out at age sixteen and worked at menial jobs. He nevertheless pursued a literary career, reading widely in the local library, where he discovered and was encouraged in his own literary aspirations by the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and other African American writers. Drawn to the theater and inspired by the civil rights movement, in 1968 Wilson founded the Black Horizons Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota. Wilson's first two plays failed to gain much attention, but his third, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1982), about a group of black musicians discussing their experiences in racist America, won him wide recognition as an important new dramatist and interpreter of the African American experience. His subsequent plays have made him one of America's most celebrated dramatists and have earned him numerous prizes, among them the Tony Award (1985), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1985), and the Pulitzer Prize for drama (1990). His other plays include Fences (1985), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988), The Piano Lesson (1987), and Two Trains Running (1990).