(born 1945) Pittsburgh-born African American playwright and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987 and 1990. Wilson’s plays often stem from impressions formed growing up during the 1950s and 1960s in the city’s black community known as “The Hill.” In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1985), Two Trains Running (1993) and The Piano Lesson (1990), Wilson builds dramas on the words and dreams of working-class African Americans. Recently, Wilson has become embroiled in debate over the representation of African Americans in theater. His manifesto for black artists in the American theater argues that it is the responsibility of theaters to endeavor to understand the culture of non-Europeans, rather than that of non-white artists to transform and compromise their work for white audiences.