AN ODE TO ONE OF AMERICA'S FOREMOST BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS, AUGUST WILSON, AND A MEDITATION ON CULTURE, ERASURE, AND WHAT ULTIMATELY DRIVES AN ARTIST'S DESIRE TO CREATE. August Wilson grew up open to the creative inspiration in everything he encountered: in library books, in music, in artworks, in the lively conversations overheard in the restaurants and barbershops lining the Pittsburgh neighborhood of his childhood. August paid attention. He listened. And when he got older, he got ideas about what to do with everything he’d seen and heard — ideas that would make him one of the greatest playwrights in American history.