In little more than twenty years, playwright August Wilson (1945-2005) completed a ten-play cycle depicting African American life in the twentieth century, with each play taking place in a different decade. Two of the plays?Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990)?were awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and seven of them received the New York Drama Critics" Circle Award for best American play. Wilson was indisputably the most significant American playwright to emerge since Edward Albee, whose first plays were produced in the early 1960s. Conversations with August Wilson collects a selection of the many interviews Wilson gave from 1984 to 2004. In the interviews, the playwright covers at length and in detail his plays and his background. He comments as well on such subjects as the differences between African Americans and whites, his call for more black theater companies, and his belief that African Americans made a mistake in assimilating themselves into the white mainstream....