Liver Cancer Treatment
Playwright August Wilson says he has liver cancer Award-winning playwright August Wilson recently told a newspaper that he has been diagnosed with liver cancer.
Wilson, 60, the leading Black playwright of his generation, was diagnosed with the illness in June.
"It's not like poker; you can't throw your hand in," Wilson told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by phone from Seattle. "I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready."
The newspaper said doctors had recommended drug therapy followed by a liver transplant, but the disease proved too far advanced. Wilson said his physicians told him then that he had three to five months to live.
Wilson has recently been completing his 10-play cycle chronicling the Black experience in 20th-century America--one play for each decade.
Two plays in the cycle, Fences and The Piano Lesson, earned Pulitzer Prizes. The 10th play, Radio Golf, is now running in L.A.
In a statement issued at JET press time, Deanna Levitin, his personal assistant said the "prognosis is serious, but Wilson is dealing with the matter head-on. Those close to Wilson remain optimistic regarding his situation," The Seattle Times reported.
Levitin said that until very recently, Wilson was working on rewrites of his play, Radio Golf. The play is the final part of Wilson's epic 10-play cycle exploring aspects of Black life through each decade of the 20th century, many through the prism of his childhood and young adult years in Pittsburgh.
Wilson has lived in Seattle since 1990. He and his wife Constanza Romero, a costume designer he married in 1994, have a daughter, Azula. Wilson also has a daughter from an earlier marriage.
"He's taking (the cancer) very well, with a lot of strength and determination," his wife told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "It's so hard when an illness falls on you. He has so many plans for working."
COPYRIGHT 2005 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
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