Margaret Edson

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Margaret Edson on PBS (April 14, 1999).
Margaret Edson on PBS (April 14, 1999).

Margaret Edson (born July 4, 1961 in Washington, D.C.) is an American playwright. Edson graduated with a B.A. in Renaissance History from Smith College, and received a master's in English literature from Georgetown University. Her jobs have included being a bicycle shop sales clerk and a volunteer ESL teacher.

Edson's first play was Wit, first produced in 1995 at South Coast Repertory in California, about a John Donne scholar who is hospitalized for and dying of ovarian cancer. Edson did use her work experience in a hospital as part of the background in writing Wit.[1] [2] At the time of the first New York production of Wit in late 1998, Edson was a kindergarten teacher at Centennial Place Elementary School (Atlanta, Georgia). She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Wit.[3] After she won the Pulitzer Prize, Edson received a large amount of publicity, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. Edson has written a second play, Satisfied, whose subject is "country-gospel radio in Kentucky".[2] As of April 2008, this second play has not received a production.

In private life, Edson's partner is Linda Merrill, a curator at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. They are the parents of two boys.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Peter Marks. "Science and Poetry Face Death in a Hospital Room", The New York Times, 18 September 1998. Retrieved on 2008-03-29. 
  2. ^ a b Kevin Sack. "At Lunch With Margaret Edson; Colors, Numbers, Letters and John Donne", The New York Times, 10 November 1998. Retrieved on 2008-04-06. 
  3. ^ Alex Kuczynski. "Teacher Turned Playwright Is Among the Winners of 22 Pulitzer Prizes", The New York Times, 13 April 1999. Retrieved on 2008-04-06. 

[edit] External links