(born 1941) Novelist educated at the University of Pennsylvania; in 1963, only the second African American to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. Wideman returned to the Ivy League university to teach English and to write. His first novel, A Glance Away (1967), was followed by a succession of fictional works leading to Sent for You Yesterday (1983), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award of 1984. Wideman’s next work, the non-fictional Brothers and Keepers (1984), focused on the divergent paths he and his brother, who was imprisoned for armed robbery had taken. Subsequent novels have blended fiction and historical events: Fever (1989) described yellow fever in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, while Philadelphia Fire (1990) touched on the aftermath of the 1984 police bombing of the MOVE cult in West Philadelphia.