<p><strong>August Wilson</strong> was the most iconic African American playwright of the late-twentieth century, most known for the Century Cycle, a series of ten plays set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. Of these, <em>Fences</em> earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award in 1987, and another Pulitzer Prize in 1990, for <em>The Piano Lesson</em>. In 1996,<em> Seven Guitars</em> premiered on the Broadway stage, followed by <em>King Hedley II</em> in 2001 and <em>Gem of the Ocean</em> in 2004.</p>
In 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog. Her other plays include Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), In the Blood, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom and The America Play. In 2007, her 365 Days/365 Plays was produced at more than seven hundred theaters worldwide. Ms. Parks is a MacArthur Fellow and Master Writer Chair at The Public Theater. In 2018, she was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama.