BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY - SFRICAN AMERICAN " JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN " IS A WRITER, PROFESSOR AT BROWN UNIVERSITYAND SITS ON THE CONTRIBUTING EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE LITERARY JOURNAL "CONJUNCTION" - GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

                    BLACK  SOCIAL  HISTORY                                                                                                                                              

John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman
Wideman at the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in 2010
Born	June 14, 1941 (age 74) Washington, D.C.
Occupation	Professor
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania New College, Oxford
Spouse	Judith Ann Goldman (1965–2000)
Children	Three

John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941) is an American writer, professor at Brown University,^[1] and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.^[2]

Contents

  

• 1Early life
• 2Writing and teaching career
  • 2.1Awards
• 3Family
• 4Bibliography
  • 4.1Novels
  • 4.2Omnibus editions
  • 4.3Collections
  • 4.4Memoirs and other
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Early life

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. 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 theUniversity of Iowa.

Writing and teaching career

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.^[3] 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."^[4]

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.

Awards

Wideman has been the recipient of a number of awards for his writing. His 1990 novel Philadelphia Fire^[5] won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1990, and the American Book Awardsin 1991. His non-fiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Critics Circle nomination,^[6] and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.

Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement, and won the lifetime achievement award of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in 2011.^[7]

Wideman is also the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Family

In 1965 he married Judith Ann Goldman, an attorney, with whom he has three children: Daniel, Jacob, and Jamila. That marriage ended in divorce in 2000. In 2004 he married French journalist Catherine Nedonchelle, with whom he resides on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City.

Jacob Wideman,^[8] John's middle child, is currently serving a life sentence for a 1986 murder, and was denied parole in May 2011.^[9] He was subsequently denied parole in 2012 and again in May 2013. He was most recently denied parole on January 8, 2015.^[10][11][12]

John Edgar Wideman's daughter Jamila Wideman was formerly a professional basketball player in the Women's National Basketball Association and the Israeli League.

Bibliography

Novels

• A Glance Away, New York, NY: Harcourt, 1967. London: Allison & Busby, 1984.
• Hurry Home, New York, NY: Harcourt, 1970.
• The Lynchers, New York, NY: Harcourt, 1973.
• Hiding Place, New York, NY: Avon, 1981. London: Allison & Busby, 1984.
• Sent for You Yesterday, New York, NY: Avon, 1983. London: Allison & Busby, 1984.
• Reuben, New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1987.
• Philadelphia Fire, New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1990.
• The Cattle Killing, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
• Two Cities, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
• Fanon, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin (2008)

Omnibus editions

• The Homewood Books (includes Damballah, Hiding Place and Sent for You Yesterday); Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992; as The Homewood Trilogy, New York, NY: Avon, 1985.
• A Glance Away, Hurry Home, and The Lynchers: Three Early Novels by John Edgar Wideman, New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1994.

Collections

• Damballah, (short stories), New York, NY: Avon, 1981. London: Allison & Busby, 1984.
• Fever (short stories), New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1989.
• The Stories of John Edgar Wideman, New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1992; published as All Stories Are True, New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1993.
• God's Gym (short stories), Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
• Briefs (micro stories), Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2010.

Memoirs and other

• Brothers and Keepers (memoir), New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1984. London: Allison & Busby, 1985.
• Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society, New York, NY: Pantheon, 1994.
• (With Bonnie TuSmith) Conversations with John Edgar Wideman, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
• Hoop Roots: Basketball, Race, and Love (memoir), Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
• (Editor) My Soul Has Grown Deep: Classics of Early African-American Literature, Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 2001.
• (Editor) 20: The Best of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
• The Island: Martinique, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Directions, 2003.