Edwin Wilson

Edwin Wilson

Author, teacher, critic, Edwin Wilson began his career as Assistant to the Producer for a Broadway play directed by John Gielgud, and the film Lord of the Flies directed by Peter Brook. He directed a season at the Barter Theatre in Virginia and produced plays off-Broadway as well as co-producing the Broadway play Agatha Sue, I Love You directed by George Abbott. He also produced the film The Nashville Sound,

Educated at Vanderbilt, Edinburgh, and Yale, he received the first Doctor of Fine Arts degree awarded by Yale. From 1972 to 1994 he was the theatre critic for The Wall Street Journal. For thirty years he taught at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. During the past four decades he has been the pre-eminent writer of college theatre text books in the U.S. His three books (two co-authored with Alvin Goldfarb) have appeared in 28 editions, with total sales of over one million copies.

His previous activities also included: President of the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Theatre Development Fund, Chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Drama Jury, and board member of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the John Golden Fund. In the early 1990s, he conducted 90 half-hour television interviews with theater artists ranging from George Abbott to Jerry Zaks , a series appearing on CUNY-TV in New York and 200 PBS stations around the country.

The Patron Murders is Wilson’s first novel.