New Dramatists to Honor August Wilson

Whoopi Goldberg, currently starring on Broadway in a revival of the Wilson play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, will present the award to the author, while Charles S. Dutton (the show's original star, now repeating his role) and Brian Stokes Mitchell (who starred in the Broadway production of Wilson's King Hedley II) will offer tributes.

Wilson, an alumnus of New Dramatists, is also the author of Jitney (Olivier Award), Fences (Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award), Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson (Pulitzer Prize), Two Trains Running, and Seven Guitars, a series of plays that explores the African-American experience throughout the various decades of the 20th century. He has received seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards for his work, as well as Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships, the Whiting Writers' Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a number of honorary degrees.