John Edgar Wideman

Wideman's brother, Robert, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his role in a 1975 murder. After more than 40 years in prison, his sentence was commuted and he was released on July 2, 2019.

The trilogy was celebrated upon publication, inspiring a claim in The New York Times that Wideman was "one of America's premier writers of fiction". For many critics and scholars, the trilogy represents Wideman's artistic breakthrough, with some even considering it his greatest literary achievement. Surveying Wideman's career in The Nation in 2016, the critic Jesse McCarthy claimed that the trilogy shows Wideman "achieving a distinctive voice that is more confident and vernacular than in his early work". Some of the stories in Damballah have been widely anthologized.

In 2014, after a decade at Brown University, and nearly 50 years in academia, Wideman became an emeritus professor. He has since published a hybrid work of fiction and nonfiction that explores the life of Louis Till, the father of Emmett Till, entitled Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File (2016). He published a collection of stories, American Histories, in 2018. In 2021, a selection of his short fiction, produced over four decades, was published as You Made Me Love You: Selected Stories, 1981-2018. Publishers Weekly proclaimed the collection "a stunning showcase" that confirms Wideman's place in American literature.

The following year, his story collection, God's Gym, was published. This was followed by his first novel in a decade, and tenth overall, Fanon, which appeared in 2008. In 2010, a collection of flash fiction, entitled Briefs, was published, inspiring a theatrical adaptation that premiered in Los Angeles in 2018.

In 2004, Wideman was appointed Asa Messer Professor and Professor of Africana Studies and Literary Arts at Brown University. In the same year, he married French journalist Catherine Nedonchelle.

In 2004, Wideman married French journalist Catherine Nedonchelle. He resides in France and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City.

Wideman's work has been, and continues to be, the focus of academic study. The John Edgar Wideman Society was formed to promote scholarship and awareness of his work. Affiliated with the American Literature Association, it held its first international conference in 2003. Wideman's papers, including manuscripts, correspondence, and other materials, are housed at the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

In 2001, the University of Massachusetts appointed Wideman a Distinguished Professor; it was the same year that another memoir, Hoop Roots, appeared, focusing on Wideman's experience as a player and fan of basketball. A review in Bookpage hailed it as "one of the best books ever written about the sport". It was followed by a nonfiction book on Martinique entitled The Island: Martinique (2003).

During this period, Wideman was in demand as "one of America's most distinguished writers". He edited anthologies, provided introductions for books, and appeared in various media, including television, to comment on societal issues, particularly those affecting African Americans. Additionally, his daughter, Jamila, became a star basketball player and, in 1997, the third overall pick in the inaugural draft of the Women's National Basketball Association, bringing further media attention, including a cover story in Sports Illustrated magazine.

In 1993, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in awarding him a fellowship, noted that Wideman "has contributed to a new humanist perspective in American literature, distilling personality and history, crime and mysticism, art and the exigencies of material life into his work." Honors bestowed for his entire body of work include:

Philadelphia Fire was followed by a story collection, The Stories of John Edgar Wideman (later re-issued as All Stories Are True) in 1992; a memoir, Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society (1994), and two more novels, The Cattle Killing (1996) and Two Cities (1998). Notably, while Wideman wrote about his son's story in some of these books (for example, in Philadelphia Fire and in Fatheralong) he has not written a memoir about it. In interviews, he has frequently declined to discuss the case.

Wideman's winning the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991 marked the first time a writer had won that prize twice, a feat that has since been accomplished by three other writers: Philip Roth, E. L. Doctorow, and Ha Jin.

Wideman then entered what is, to date, the most prolific period of his career. A novel written before his son Jacob's crime, entitled Reuben, appeared in 1987. This was followed by a collection of stories, entitled Fever (1989). The following year saw the publication of the novel Philadelphia Fire, which garnered both critical acclaim and literary awards. Inspired by the police's 1985 bombing of the Philadelphia headquarters of the black liberation group known as MOVE—an act that resulted in the death of five children and the loss of two city blocks—the "intense, poetic narrative" centers on one man's attempt to find, and write about, a child rumored to have survived the tragedy.

In 1986, Wideman joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where the prominent author James Baldwin was a visiting member of the faculty. Wideman taught in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers.

In 1984, Wideman followed the successful Homewood trilogy with what has been called his most popular book, Brothers and Keepers. Wideman's first memoir delves into his brother Robert's story. Stylistically, the book is distinctive for its use of multiple voices, alternating between Wideman and his brother. It is also notable for its exploration of the realities of the American criminal justice system and life in prison, particularly for African Americans. Ishmael Reed, reviewing the book in The New York Times, called it "a rare triumph". Writing in The New York Review of Books in 1997, Joyce Carol Oates claimed that it belongs among the "masterpieces of American memoir".

Wideman incorporated his brother's experience into his work. After an eight-year publication hiatus, he published two books simultaneously: a story collection, Damballah, and a novel, Hiding Place, both of which appeared in 1981 and allude to the events that resulted in Robert's imprisonment. He followed these books with another novel, Sent for You Yesterday, in 1983. Because these books share characters and a setting in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood, they are frequently referred to as the "Homewood trilogy".

Wideman joined the faculty of the University of Wyoming in 1975. That same year, Wideman's daughter, Jamila, was born. The circumstances of her birth were traumatic, as a complication caused Wideman's wife, Judith, to be transported by ambulance from Laramie, Wyoming, to Denver, Colorado, where Jamila was born two months premature.

In 1974, Wideman was promoted to a full professorship of English at Penn, and he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to pursue research in African-American literature. However, he had already begun to look for a reprieve from his duties at the institution, as well as life in Philadelphia, in order to focus on his writing and raising a family. Having previously visited the University of Wyoming, he accepted an offer to join its faculty.

In 1973, Wideman's third novel, The Lynchers, was published. Examining violent strains of black nationalist ideology that had emerged during the 1960s, the novel depicts African-American characters who plan to lynch a white police officer. Writing in The New York Times, Anatole Broyard claimed that Wideman "can make an ordinary scene sing the blues like nobody's business", although he found the novel to be flawed.

Wideman's initial courses in African-American literature grew into a program in African American Studies, which Wideman helped to establish. From 1971 to 1973, he served as director of the program. In 1972, he stepped down as an assistant basketball coach.

In 1970, Wideman's second son, Jacob, was born. In the same year, his second novel, Hurry Home, was published. A reviewer for The New York Times admired the novel's "dazzling display" of "Joycean" prose and Wideman's "formidable command of the techniques of fiction".

Responding to student demand, Wideman offered Penn's first classes in African-American literature in 1968. In the same year, his first son, Daniel, was born. Wideman also became an assistant coach for the varsity men's basketball team for which he had played as a student.

In 1967, Wideman accepted a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania. That summer, his first novel, A Glance Away, was published. Wideman's editor, Hiram Haydn, had seen his profile in LOOK Magazine and contacted Wideman before he left for Oxford, asking the aspiring author to send him his writing. While Wideman was at Oxford, Haydn read the unfinished manuscript of A Glance Away and agreed to publish it. The novel garnered positive reviews. A reviewer in The New York Times Book Review described Wideman as "a novelist of high seriousness and depth" who had written "a powerfully inventive" debut.

In 1965, Wideman married Judith Goldman, a white Jewish woman from Long Island whom he began dating when both were undergraduates at Penn. The following year, Wideman received a BPhil degree from Oxford and returned to the U.S. He spent the 1966–67 academic year at the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he studied under Kurt Vonnegut and José Donoso.

Wideman was married to Judith Ann Goldman, an attorney, from 1965 until their divorce in 2000. The couple had three children together: Daniel Wideman is a poet, playwright, and essayist, as well as a business executive; Jacob Wideman was convicted of a murder committed while he was a minor and sentenced to life in prison in Arizona, and Jamila Wideman is a lawyer and executive at the National Basketball Association, having played professional basketball in the Women's National Basketball Association and the Israeli League.

Raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wideman excelled as a student athlete at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1963, he became the second African American to win a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. In addition to his work as a writer, Wideman has had a career in academia as a literature and creative writing professor at both public and Ivy League universities.

Wideman's teachers had noted his intelligence from an early age, and he proved to be an outstanding student. In high school, he was a star basketball player, president of the student body, and valedictorian of his class. However, Wideman was socially cautious, especially around white students. Interviewed for an article in 1963, one of his white classmates recalled Wideman telling her that "he wouldn't want to be seen on the street alone with a white girl" and that "when class breaks came, he would seldom walk to the next class with the white students".

In 1963, before graduating with a bachelor's degree in English, Wideman was named a Rhodes Scholar, becoming the second African American to win the prestigious award from the University of Oxford. The achievement brought him national attention: he was profiled in LOOK Magazine that spring, in an article entitled, "The Astonishing John Wideman". It described Wideman as having been "showered with so many academic and athletic honors, awards and 'firsts' that he is unable to enumerate them. He sometimes forgets that he won a prize that another student would consider the high point of a college career".

In the fall of 1963, Wideman moved to England to begin his studies at Oxford, where he pursued a thesis on 18th-century British fiction. He also continued to play basketball and was captain of the Oxford University men's basketball team, where one of his teammates was fellow Rhodes Scholar, and future NBA All-Star and United States Senator, Bill Bradley. The two had played against each other as undergraduates, when Bradley was at Princeton. At Oxford, their team won the 1965 B.U.S.F. National Championship and the 1966 A.B.B.A. National Championship.

After the family returned to Laramie, Wideman learned that his youngest brother, Robert, was a fugitive. Ten years younger than Wideman, Robert had grown up in Homewood. During the 1960s and early 1970s, the neighborhood was in a state of decline—it has frequently been described as a ghetto. Robert began to use drugs, a habit which he supported via petty crime. In November 1975, along with two accomplices, he participated in a robbery scheme that went awry when the intended victim, a fence named Nicola Morena, fled. One of Robert's accomplices shot Morena as he ran. A short time later, a passerby encountered the wounded man and called for an ambulance. Morena was taken to the nearest hospital, which did not have the surgeon necessary to treat his wound, and after a period of waiting, he was transported to another hospital, where he died. The victim's family later filed a lawsuit against the city of Pittsburgh, the hospitals and doctors involved, and the ambulance drivers, claiming negligence. That suit was not successful, although the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania acknowledged that a delay in Morena's treatment was "a contributing factor in causing his death". The family ultimately settled a malpractice lawsuit against the hospital system.

Wideman attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was offered a Benjamin Franklin Scholarship for academic merit and was one of a small number of African Americans to enroll in 1959. In his memoir, Brothers and Keepers, he described a heated freshman-year encounter with a white student in the dorm room of an African-American friend: the white student claimed to know more about blues music than Wideman did, and his friend refused to offer support. According to Wideman, the encounter left him feeling that he had "no place to hide", and he was in an environment "that continually set me against them and against myself". Feeling alienated, he decided to quit college, but was stopped by his basketball coach at a bus station, where Wideman was about to board a bus back to Pittsburgh. Despite his trepidation about college, Wideman persevered. Addressing his brother in Brothers and Keepers, he summarized his motivation:

John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus on the African-American experience.

Wideman was born on June 14, 1941, in Washington, D.C., the oldest of five children of Edgar (1918–2001) and Bette (née French; 1921–2008) Wideman.

Wideman's father, Edgar, graduated high school in Pittsburgh, where he was an avid basketball player. After marrying Wideman's mother, Bette, he moved with her to Washington, D.C., for a job in the U.S. Government Printing Office. The couple moved back to Pittsburgh's Homewood neighborhood after Wideman was born in 1941. During World War II, Wideman's father enlisted in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, and on Saipan. After the War, he worked several jobs simultaneously, including as a waiter and sanitation worker, in order to support the family. As a result, the family was able to move to a predominantly white neighborhood, Shadyside, allowing Wideman to attend Pittsburgh's Peabody High School.