Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
August Wilson's American Century: Life as Art

August Wilson's American Century: Life as Art

Glasco, Laurence A.

Hardcover

Series: Regional

Entertainment & Performing ArtsBiographies GeneralLiterary Figures

Publisher Price: $35.00

ISBN10: 0822948540
ISBN13: 9780822948544
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: Feb 10 2026
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.55
Height: 1.27 Width: 6.38 Depth: 9.08
Language: English
Listed in Pioneer Press (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Most Anticipated of 2026

Playwright August Wilson is best known for his American Century Cycle, a sequence of ten plays--including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences and The Piano Lesson--that chronicle the lives of Black Americans in each decade of the twentieth century. But behind the celebrated plays stands a complex man shaped by his hometown's vibrant Black culture. In August Wilson's American Century: Life as Art, Laurence A. Glasco, one of the foremost historians of Black life in Pittsburgh, draws on Wilson's early poetry, archival material, and original interviews with family members, neighbors, and friends to show how the city and its residents shaped the playwright and his work. Wilson's overlapping identities as an outsider, warrior, race man, and poet helped him persevere in the face of setbacks, weave real-life observations with his poetry to craft memorable dialogue and compelling characters, and portray the realities of race in America in ways that have resonated with theatergoers and readers ever since. Glasco uncovers the story of how the people and places of Pittsburgh remained with Wilson after he left his hometown, shining through in a body of work that brought the struggles and triumphs of the Black experience to a wide audience and changed American theater for the better.

Also from

Glasco, Laurence A.

View All

Also in

Literary Figures

View All