I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.

In 1969 he married Brenda Burton a Muslim and Wilson converted to Islam in order to sustain the marriage. At 20 he decided he was a poet and submitted his poetry to such magazines as Harpers. In 1980 he received a fellowship for The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.

August Wilson (April 27 1945 – October 2 2005) was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays The Pittsburgh Cycle for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama.