John Edgar Wideman
| John Edgar Wideman | |
|---|---|
Wideman at the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in 2010
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| Born |
June 14, 1941 Washington, D.C. |
| Occupation | Professor (emeritus) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
University of Pennsylvania New College, Oxford |
| Spouse | Judith Ann Goldman (1965–2000) Catherine Nedonchelle (2004-present) |
| Children | Three |
John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941) is an American writer, professor emeritus at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
Wideman was born on June 14, 1941. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. In 1962 he was the second African American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
A widely celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. In 2000, he won the O. Henry Award for his short story "Weight", published in Callaloo journal. Following the publication of the Homewood trilogy, The New York Times proclaimed John Edgar Wideman, "one of America's premier writers of fiction."
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently is a professor at Brown University.
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