Playwright August Wilson dies at 60

Author won Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award for his play ‘Fences’
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson died Sunday of liver cancer. Wilson’s 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.
Ted S. Warren / AP


Updated: 9:35 a.m. ET Oct. 3, 2005
NEW YORK - 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.

Wilson died at Swedish Medical Center 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.

“We’ve lost a great writer, I think the greatest writer that our generation has seen and I’ve lost a dear, dear friend and collaborator,” said Kenny Leon, who directed the Broadway production of “Gem of the Ocean” as well as Wilson’s most recent play, “Radio Golf,” which just concluded a run in Los Angeles.