John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941) is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions. Wideman was born on June 14, 1941. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. A widely-celebrated writer...