Patti Hartigan

United States

Contributor at Boston Magazine

Freelance Writer and Editor at Freelance

Arts journalist

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Articles

Paul Devlin | The New Criterion

Jan 24, 2025 | newcriterion.com | Paul Devlin |Patti Hartigan

Select an AuthorAbel, LionelAbowitz, RichardAdams, HarryAdams, J.
Washington Independent Review of Books

Aug 10, 2024 | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Patti Hartigan

Wilson adored his mother, Daisy, and desperately sought her approval, but she wanted him to be a lawyer and remained unimpressed by his poetry or even his award-winning plays. “You be a writer when you get something on television,” she told him.
Where’s the barbed wire?

May 1, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Patti Hartigan |John Lahr

August Wilson wrote standing up at an accountant’s desk on which he had pinned the mottos ‘Take it to the moon’ and ‘Don’t be afraid, just play the music.’ His Century cycle, whose ten plays bear witness to African American experience in the 20th century, decade by decade, turned historical catastrophe into imaginative triumph. It has no equal in theatrical literature.
AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of February

Feb 28, 2024 | lithub.com | Patti Hartigan |Dion Graham

Each month, our friends at AudioFile Magazine share a curated list of the best audiobooks for your literary listening pleasure. *FEBRUARY FICTION Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar| Read by Arian MoayedAudioFile Earphones Award[Random House Audio | 10.5 hrs.]Iranian American actor Arian Moayed gives the performance of a lifetime in poet Kaveh Akbar’s extraordinary debut novel.
9 Books We Recommend Reading for Black History Month

Feb 20, 2024 | aarp.org | Tiya Miles |Viola Davis |Patti Hartigan |Imani Perry

There are so many wonderful biographies and histories that explore the Black experience in America, but these 9 recent books are particular standouts. Heirlooms embody powerful familial stories, and Miles meticulously takes us through one such story of an inheritance that reveals as much about a maternal ancestry as it does about the history of the United States. In 1852, an enslaved woman gave a sack to her 9-year-old daughter before the girl was sold and the pair were separated forever.
AUGUST WILSON by Patti Hartigan Read by Dion Graham Patti Hartigan Afterword

Feb 8, 2024 | audiofilemagazine.com | Patti Hartigan

This biography of playwright and poet August Wilson contains both narrative and brief passages from some of his plays. Thus, the narrator has to be both storyteller and actor. Dion Graham excels at both. His rich voice carries the biography along nicely, but it is when he recites lines from plays such as FENCES and quotations from figures in Wilson's past that Graham really shines. He alters his voice and delivery to reflect each person directly quoted. It's like listening to a full-cast production.
Remembering August Wilson

Sep 19, 2023 | orartswatch.org | Patti Hartigan |Misha Berson

Playwrights are not always keen to talk to journalists. Especially journalists who have critiqued their work. Yet despite his stature as America’s most prominent Black dramatist, and the frantic pace of his work and travel life, August Wilson often made himself available for interviews. He welcomed the chance to tell his own story, in his own words.
New biography of theater titan August Wilson

Aug 14, 2023 | startribune.com | Rohan Preston |Patti Hartigan

He was a man made of words. And with his words dipped in the lyric pools of blues and jazz, he remade how the world sees Black people. Playwright August Wilson created dramas such as "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson" — the last two both winners of the Pulitzer Prize — that stand as an unparalleled magnum opus of Black life in 20th-century America. Like novelist Toni Morrison, he lifted the ordinary into the majestic, minting a raft of stars along the way.
Playwright August Wilson was ahead of his time. But would he have made it today?

Aug 11, 2023 | newspub.live | Patti Hartigan

ReviewAugust Wilson: A LifeBy Patti HartiganSimon & Schuster: 544 pages, $32.50If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
August Wilson: A Life

Aug 7, 2023 | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Patti Hartigan

The celebrated playwright August Wilson (1945-2005) was born Frederick August Kittel Jr. to a Black mother and a white father who abandoned his wife and six children. The fourth child and namesake son was called Freddie, but when his father deserted the family, Freddie took his mother’s surname and became August Wilson. The fatherless child never discussed the scars of being abandoned, but the loss permeated his life’s work.