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The August Wilson Archive:  First Panel Discussion 
(January 2021) 

Dr. David Anderson 
Managing Editor, August Wilson Journal 

and 

Dr. Michael Downing 
Editor, August Wilson Journal 

 
 

Right now, it’s 450 boxes and that includes 100 boxes of books . . .  

William Daw, University of Pittsburgh 

Abstract  

The Editor and Managing Editor of the August Wilson Journal met with four specialists from the 
University Library System (ULS) at the University of Pittsburgh and one University of Pittsburgh 
history professor via Zoom on January 14, 2021 to discuss the ULS’s recent acquisition of August 

Wilson’s archival materials1. 

Keywords 
August Wilson, August Wilson Archive, University of Pittsburgh, University Library System,  

Hillman Library, Archives and Special Collections, August Wilson Estate 

The following is an edited version of an approximately 55-minute conversation between the 
editors of the August Wilson Journal and five experts from the University of Pittsburgh, re-
lated to the University’s acquisition of the August Wilson Archives from the August Wilson 
Estate in October 2020. The discussion took place on January 14, 2021 and has been edited for 
grammar and clarity. There was also some consideration of other Wilson materials held by 
other entities/persons in the Pittsburgh area and beyond. Those collections will be investi-
gated, apart from this discussion. 

 
Discussion Participants 

 
William Daw: Curator of the Curtis Theatre Collection for the Archives and Special Collec-
tions in the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh; also serves as Liaison 
Librarian to the Theatre Arts Department. 
 

 
1 In October of 2020, the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh announced the acquisition 

of August Wilson’s archival materials. The materials include more than 450 boxes, including “scripts, photographs, 
production materials, speeches, essays, and items that document his career and interests from the 1960s to the 
2010s.”  The archive will reside in Hillman Library’s Archives and Special Collections (American Theatre, October 
30, 2020). 

https://augustwilson.pitt.edu/ojs/augustwilson
https://www.library.pitt.edu/
https://www.americantheatre.org/2020/10/30/the-university-of-pittsburgh-acquires-august-wilson-archive/
https://www.americantheatre.org/2020/10/30/the-university-of-pittsburgh-acquires-august-wilson-archive/


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Ed Galloway: Associate University Librarian for Archives and Special Collections, overseeing 
Archives and Special Collections, including the acquisition of the August Wilson archive. 
 
Vanessa Gabler: Electronic Publications Manager responsible for the journal publishing pro-
gram, which includes the August Wilson Journal. 
 
Megan Massanelli: Engagement and Outreach Librarian for Archives and Special Collec-
tions, currently working with the Kuntu Repertory Theatre Collection, which is a theater that 
August Wilson helped to found in Pittsburgh.  
 
Laurence Glasco: Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh. 
 
Michael Downing: Professor of English at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and Editor 
of the August Wilson Journal. 
 
David Anderson: Professor of English, Butler County Community College (retired); Manag-
ing Editor of the August Wilson Journal. 
 
David Anderson moderated. 
 

The Boxes 
 
Anderson: Good morning, everyone. First question: Have all of the papers arrived for the 
August Wilson Archive? 
 
Galloway: Yes, they are here, all but a couple of boxes of poetry, which will come to us at a 
later date. 
 
Anderson: Are the papers in their permanent space, or is that space yet to be determined? 
 
Daw: To be determined. At this point in time, we are thinking that the majority of the papers 
will be at the Archives & Special Collections’ (A&SC) Hillman Library location. It depends on 
how big the collection is at the end of the project. Right now it's 450 boxes and that includes 
100 boxes of books. The size of the space that we need to process it dictated that we keep it at 
the A&SC Thomas Boulevard off-campus location for now. That's really a better place for our 
staff to organize it. We have more workspace at that location. 
 
Galloway: About 30 of those boxes comprise awards, memorabilia, plaques, posters, and 
things of that sort that wouldn't be suitable for us to store very well in Hillman, so Bill is spot 
on with his answer. 
 
Gabler: You and Michael have both been to Thomas Boulevard before. We've had meetings 
there. So when they say “Thomas Boulevard,” it's where we had some of our meetings. 
 
Anderson: Is that the place that has the bookshelves that go all the way up to the sky? Yes, 
Michael and I have been there. Regarding the boxes, are these some random Amazon, grocery, 
or wine store boxes, or are they standard Staples boxes, the legal size boxes? 
 
Galloway: They're largely archival-quality, cubic-foot boxes. I've seen many collections in my 
day that come in liquor store boxes and Office Depot boxes. This was not the case at all. 

https://augustwilson.library.pitt.edu/


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Anderson: It sounds like these were not begun by Wilson himself—that the papers were 
probably in filing cabinets or places here and there and were boxed just for this for this ship-
ment. 
 
Galloway: The details of how the archive was begun is something you might want to verify 
with the Estate. When we first began negotiations, the archive was already in storage at a rec-
ords center storage unit in the Seattle area, and as Bill will testify, it appears that there was 
quite a bit of organization taking place in some of the earlier boxes. Whether Wilson himself 
did that is unknown to us at the moment. We're going to pursue that question. So, do you 
want to expand on that, Bill? 
 
Daw: I would say that all of the boxes are better quality than we usually get. That's for certain, 
but I don't want to say that they're going to be the final boxes that will be used. We're going 
to transfer them into archival quality boxes and folders. It's obvious to us that the Wilson 
estate’s staff, be it Wilson's assistants and maybe additional staff, went to a great deal of effort 
to box the collection and then come up with a numbering system for those boxes and then 
described, at least at the box level, the contents of each box. 
 
Anderson:  So the boxes are labeled, numbered, lettered, something like that? 
 
Daw: Yes.  
 
Anderson: I had a question about whether the boxes themselves would become an organizing 
principle for the collection. Like “box 32 folder five” or something like that. Or is there a library 
standard organization scheme for materials like this, or is it organic? Does each collection 
find its own scheme of organization? I know that you've got the Mary Roberts Rinehart pa-
pers, and I'm guessing you have some papers from other writers as well. 
 
Galloway: Probably the best way to answer that would be the latter, the organic. The way they 
are boxed is going to help us process that collection, but a scheme has already emerged. It's 
very clear that the cycle of plays, certainly in the American Century Cycle, is what most people 
will want to access this collection by, and the boxes themselves identify or are identified as 
such. That certainly is going to be a principle of access for sure. 

There is also a large number of boxes that contain Wilson’s writing tablets that you're 
so familiar with hearing about, twelve, fifteen, twenty boxes. Boxes of nothing but yellow tab-
lets. Those are going to be probably the single most challenging part of the whole collection 
because there is no organization to them. There are few dates on them. That's going to take 
some real expertise and time to figure out what all different subjects and plays and people and 
concepts and thinking are all going to be scattered in these notebooks. 
 
Anderson: So some of those tablets might turn out to be play specific? 
 
Daw: There could be single tablets or notebooks that have drafts of scenes from specific Amer-
ican Century Cycle plays. 
 
Glasco: As I saw, I went through about 15 boxes about five years ago in Seattle. They were 
related mainly to his years in Pittsburgh, and it was great stuff. The challenge was that he 
saved things, but he did not date them, which makes it difficult to write up because you don't 
know the sequence that you're dealing with. So for dating for some of the things they said, 
depending on the way the typeface is, a certain typewriter that made a certain error when it 
typed the letter D, or something like that, for example, that helps to date it. Then you switch 



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to the computer, so that helps but doesn't really give you a fine-grain sequence. That will be a 
great challenge. 
 
Anderson: I believe Pitt already had Black Bart, for example, and maybe some other Wilson 
materials. 
 
Glasco: As in the Bob Johnson papers. There are quite a few Wilson materials, especially on 
Black Bart because Bob Johnson helped write Black Bart and helped in its early production. 
So there's good material on that and it's an understudied play. People kind of dismiss it, but I 
looked at the manuscript. Well, people can look at it. I think he's got some great lines in it. It 
doesn't have the depth and the gravitas of the plays that came later, because it's partly a com-
edy, it's a satire, but there are some great lines and great dialogue. 
 
Anderson: Although that's the only way you can look at it, isn't it, to see the manuscript? 
 
Glasco: Yes. 
 
Daw: We have some documentation in the Bob Johnson papers on Black Bart and also the 
original production of Jitney! from 1982. Bob Johnson was involved in both of those produc-
tions, very early in Black Bart. I don't know how much he was involved once Wilson moved to 
Minnesota. There's a lot on Jitney! because he directed that production, and then Megan has 
some materials if she wants to chime in. 
 
Massanelli: I can definitely speak to that. I'm still working on finishing up the processing for 
the Kuntu Repertory Theatre. August Wilson was a founding member, and some of the ma-
terials are directly related to him. Unfortunately, there's not a ton about the Kuntu Writers 
Workshop, which I know he had been involved in, but there are records related to their pro-
duction of The Homecoming, which he wrote, a one-act play. I believe he also directed it when 
they performed it, so there's a script. There are posters, some things like that. 

When Kuntu produced Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 1987, which I believe was the 
first off-Broadway production after it had been on Broadway, he actually came to their open-
ing night performance. So not only are there scripts and photographs and things like that, but 
there's a schedule of his events, while he was in town. Bill and I are working on a grant to 
digitize many of the audio-visual materials in both Kuntu Repertory Theatre’s collection and 
Bob Johnson's collection. And one of these VHS tapes actually has August Wilson meeting 
with the Kuntu Writers Workshop while he was in town in 1987, so it tends to be some things 
like that. 
 
Daw: Yes. Actually, I was doing some prep work for the Kuntu archive digitization grant today, 
and I saw that there's an audio reel in the Bob Johnson papers of what I think is an Amiri 
Baraka lecture. And it doesn't have any information on it, on the reel, except that it is Leroi 
Jones, University of Buffalo, but he came to Pitt a number of times. I'm hoping that it's a 
recording of one of his lectures from the early 70s. If that's the case, Wilson may have been at 
that. 
 

Researcher Interface 
 
Anderson: I have some questions about how the user will interface with the collection. Will 
there be a finding aid, such as for the authors that you have housed right now? How would a 
user get into those materials? 
 



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Galloway: A finding aid is always created for all of our archival collections, just as we have for, 
as you mentioned, Mary Roberts Rinehart or Gerald Stern. At the moment we are focusing on 
the processing of the physical collection; in the future we’ll be working with the Wilson estate 
to determine what may be digitized. But, the first step is the physical processing and experi-
encing the collection physically, meaning you will be expected to come to Pittsburgh, to 
Hillman Library. 

You may or may not be aware that we have just completely renovated the third floor 
of Hillman Library where Archives and Special Collections resides. It is transformative; you 
will not recognize the space. We have a really beautiful reading room that faces the Cathedral 
of Learning and the park. It has natural lighting and some consultation rooms as well. Here 
is a link for a virtual tour.  

We now have an expansive exhibit gallery space that we've never had before. I mean, 
really impressive and a large digital wall, all of which allows users to interact with material in 
a virtual way and/or coming up and seeing the material themselves. We also have a dedicated 
classroom in this space to use for teaching and instruction with primary sources. We imagine 
that the vast majority of usage of this collection will take place in that area. 
 
Anderson: When the plays were being developed, prior to Broadway, they went around the 
country in some cases. August revised some of the texts after every performance, and an ar-
tistic director told me that Wilson was very adamant about getting all of the copies back from 
the actors, more so than other playwrights. If that's the case, you may have multiple versions 
of a particular play and based on that, people would be able to look over Wilson's shoulder as 
he writes the revisions with copies like that. 
 
Galloway: That's exactly right, David. That's my understanding too; that's my hope. Bill has 
alluded to the fact that he has seen various versions of plays. There's a very good chance that 
precisely that material is here in the archive. 
 
Glasco: Wilson scholars would be interested. Michael, you must know about that. Who wrote 
the book on different iterations of Wilson's plays of how he modified and changed them?  
 
Downing: It’s Joan Harrington: I Ain’t Sorry for Nothin’ I Done. 
 
Anderson: Some materials may exist in only one copy, and I know in some places I've been 
to, such as the Hemingway papers in Boston at the JFK Library, they don't let you see the 
originals, unless it's really critical. They give you photocopies. Is that how Pitt operates too? 
 
Galloway: That is true in a couple cases where we have digitized extremely rare and valuable 
sources; for example, we have our own collection of George Washington letters, as do some 
other places, which are certainly valuable. They're also intrinsically important. And we've dig-
itized those to disseminate them broadly. We've also taken pains to make sure that the 
material is preserved. In a case like that, if a scholar wanted to come in and use that material, 
we would grant that, but for a high school student or a show and tell kind of the thing, we're 
likely going to point people to the digitized versions.  

I don't expect that we're going to find material in a contemporary collection that is 
deteriorating in a way that can’t be handled; however, I've already alluded to those notebooks. 
I would probably say that is something that we are already thinking about, because the only 
way to interact with a notebook is to turn the pages, and they're attached and that can be 
really challenging because we firmly believe that students, faculty, and other users should be 
able to interact with the original material as best as possible. We hope to put them in condi-
tions in which they can do that under appropriate measures. But in a case like this, using these 
tablets excessively may end up destroying them. The last thing we want to do is separate them 

http://www.library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections-virtual-tour
http://www.library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections-virtual-tour


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out of the tablet. Of course, we can do that but then they become loose sheets of paper. We 
might end up having to scan or photocopy those and present facsimiles to users. We need a 
little time to figure that out. 
 

Digital Material 
 
Anderson: Along the same lines, is there much in the way of digital material in the boxes? 
 
Daw: There's not a ton. It's a small part of the whole, but I think there are two or three boxes 
of discs of all eras, three-and-a-half-inch floppy disks, and other media. There's an old laptop, 
and we have a digital archivist who has seen those boxes and is starting to review those mate-
rials, but there are no hard drives or anything like that, but lots of disks, hundreds of disks2. 
  
Anderson: With documents like letters, emails, manuscripts or . . . ? 
 
Daw: She hasn’t gotten that far yet. 
 

Curator Search 
 
Anderson: You mentioned in one of your emails that you are interviewing for a curator posi-
tion. Is that curator sort of like a tenure track position, or is that a hired gun/private contractor 
to come in and just set it up? 
 
Galloway: Well, really neither of those. We just concluded our interview process, actually. 
We're in the process now of considering which candidate might be the best fit for this. Right 
now, it's advertised as what in the business is known as a project archivist. It’s the August 
Wilson Project Archivist because of the limited amount of funding that we've initially received 
to help support this. It is a year-by-year position. In this case, we were very honest with the 
candidates that we are funding for one year with expectation of expanding that to two more 
years. We are hopeful that a position of such importance around August Wilson would be-
come a permanent position in the library system, perhaps even endowed, but we're a long way 
from being able to raise those types of funds that would allow us to do that. 
 
Anderson: I came across a reference somewhere to a Broadway production entitled, The Un-
published Poetry of August Wilson. You remember that, Michael? 
 
Downing: I do remember seeing that.3  Let me look it up. 
 

 
2 Properly, “disk” refers to magnetic disks (such as hard drives, 3.5-inch diskettes, and 5.25-inch “floppies”).  In 

contrast, “disc” refers to optical discs (such as CDs and DVDs). We have chosen to use the word “disk” in this case 
for uniformity’s sake. Pitt’s Ed Galloway indicates that both formats are included in the collection. 
 

3 UniSon: An American master’s poetry comes to life. From the Oregon Shakespeare Festival website: “This 
high-energy, multimedia, music-filled theatrical experience explores the poetry of master playwright August 
Wilson in a one-of-a-kind production by UNIVERSES, one of the nation’s leading ensembles. Granted access to 
Wilson’s poetry catalogue, UNIVERSES blends it into a mythically modern story of a dying poet who leaves a 
mysterious box to his apprentice . . . with strict instructions to destroy it. Curious, the apprentice opens it, 
releasing terrors that tormented the master through his life. This world premiere fuses poetry, theatre, dance, and 
music to explore the reconstruction of collective memory, bringing Wilson’s words to a new century and a new 
generation.”  

Other details: Show length is approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes, with no intermission. The commission and 
development of UniSon were supported by the Edgerton Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Production of 
UniSon and related programs are supported by a grant from the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation. The 
show ran from April 19 through October 28, 2017 at the Angus Bowmer Theatre in Ashland, Oregon. 

 

https://www.osfashland.org/productions/2017-plays/unison.aspx


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Glasco: Archive materials would be the 92nd Street Y in New York which had August Wilson 
there on about four or five occasions where he gave a presentation, a speech, and reading of 
his works, and took questions. Those were filmed and are available from the way they sent me 
copies of them. I've used them. They copied the video, but they're quite good, quite compel-
ling, and it would be a valuable addition for the collection. I don't know what their policy is 
in terms of releasing them to another entity like Pitt, but that would be something very much 
worth pursuing. Because they sent them to me free of charge. No problem, just ask for them. 
You have to see Wilson in person talking, interacting with an audience, reading his own plays 
as poetry. These were sessions that were devoted to poetry, and he clearly considered these 
dialogues poetry and he read from several of his plays in that spirit. 
 

Do Tell 
 
Anderson: One of the questions is just in the category of “Do tell,” but during the course of 
the conversation, you've revealed quite a bit about what's in the boxes. Is there anything that 
we haven't come across or that you haven't mentioned that would be a significant surprise in 
terms of what's in the boxes? 
 
Glasco: There are examples of August’s artwork. August was a pretty good sketch artist. He 
did nice sketches of some of his plays and they're really worth looking at. 
 
Daw: In adding to what Dr. Glasco said, there are a couple of boxes of artwork and similar to 
that, jotting bits of dialogue on napkins and place mats. There's also doodles and artwork on 
napkins and things like that and also in the writing tablets there's artwork in those too. It’s 
too early to say what the full content of the collection is—we have a lot of work to do before 
we can say for sure. At this point it appears that there is not a lot of really personal or family 
materials and the focus is on his work. 
 
Glasco: I would agree, although in the early materials they brought out for me when I went 
to Seattle were materials relating to his Pittsburgh years, and there were a few very useful and 
interesting items. One was a poem to his father which is very valuable because his father is 
sort of demonized in the literature as this drunken, mean, violent, uncaring individual, which 
is a real misreading of the father, I’ve found out, and it's confirmed in this poem that August 
wrote about his father, or about and to him. But it was really about his father several years 
after his father died and which he says he put on his apron (his father was a baker). He wore 
an apron and he shook the dust off of it and went out to find his fortune in Valhalla, or some-
thing like that. Then he returned, because he was his father's son, and you can see I'm not 
getting it all, but just a reading of it shows the feeling of tenderness he had for his father. 

He has a recipe of his mother’s for her sweet potato pie. And he did love his mother's 
cooking and the aromas from the kitchen. It's in his writing. He wrote the recipe down, but 
it's her recipe for sweet potato pie. There are a few things like that. It wasn't a lot, but they 
were revealing. I wish there were more because those tell you something of his love for his 
mother, and especially love for the mother is well documented other places, but regarding his 
relationship with his father the few materials that are there really will help correct the misin-
terpretation of the father and the relationship between him and his father. 
 
Daw: I would say that the other thing I wasn't expecting to find in the collection is how much 
documentation there appears to be on not just the early productions and not just the Broad-
way productions, but every production of any Wilson play performed. It seems they've 
continually been adding to this material. 
 
Glasco: David, where will your material be published. What sort of forum? 



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Anderson: Well, that leads me to my last question, but it would be in the August Wilson 
Journal, housed by Pitt. 
 
Glasco: August came to my class once. I teach a course, History of Black Pittsburgh, and his 
sister invited him. He came to my class to talk to the students. And of course there was so 
much interest that we had to get a bigger room and open it up to the friends of the students. 
When he finished talking some lady came up to the front and said this is a poem that you 
wrote for my mother when she was in the, I don't know, first grade, second grade, something 
like that. And she saved it all these years. The woman read the poem. It was just stunning. The 
class ended, and I was so stupidly focused on August, by the time I turned back to ask this 
lady for this poem that I could copy, she had gone, she left. And I am trying to find some way 
to publicize this: Some gal out in Pittsburgh someplace with an August Wilson poem from 
the first grade, a love poem that would just be the cat’s meow as far as I'm concerned. If there's 
any way we can get some publicity out and maybe find this woman or get her to come forward. 
 
Anderson: We plan to write-up this conversation for the journal. 
 
Glasco: Good, because every time I give an interview on the radio or something I mention 
this story in hope that she's tuned in. 
 
Daw: Another thing that I think is worth talking about is Wilson's handwriting and how dif-
ficult it can be at times to read. And I think that that is something else that we're going to have 
to look at, or possibly warn researchers about, that it might take longer to conduct their re-
search than they're expecting, given the difficulty of his handwriting. 
 

How Can We Help? 
 
Anderson: My last question. Have you thought about the role that the August Wilson Journal 
or the August Wilson Society can be of any help to you? 
 
Galloway: That's a great question, and certainly one that is of most interest to us. How can 
we partner? What can we do to collaborate? 

In some cases, we think we've got a pretty good sense of how we're going to approach 
the processing of the collection. But there is so much outreach and engagement. There are so 
many scholarly possibilities here. What could we do?  

Are there awards or some types of events that we could host? Is there a conference 
that we could have here? Is there a way for you to use that forum to talk about some of our 
new discoveries? Once we’ve processed the collection, could we have a column, maybe have 
something like “From the Archivist” or something like that? 

I hope that we'll be able to fund some type of research fellowships or research schol-
ars. Getting the word out through your journal to the society would be super. We've got to 
make sure that this collection is available to not only the scholarly community, but to the 
Pittsburgh community, especially, and that there is some sense of ownership of this, particu-
larly in the Hill District, and to the youth that are there and to the community members that 
are there. If there is any way you can help us with that mission, we'd be grateful. 
 
Glasco: I think we could have a reunion of people who had known August. They're still 
around. I did one about seven or so years ago at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. We brought 
about six or seven people on the stage there to talk about August. Others were in the audience, 
and it was a really lively exchange and it was taped. 
 



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Daw: Is that the one that focused on Black Horizons? 
 
Glasco: Yes. Who was the guy who taped that? 
 
Daw: I don't know, but I've asked Chris Rawson4 about that and he assures me that he has a 
recording of that for us. 
 
Glasco: Okay, good. But I think something like that could be repeated because there are still 
quite a few people around who were active with August during his Pittsburgh years and would 
love to turn out for it. 
 
Downing: Okay, that sounds good in terms of the many things Ed just mentioned. I think 
those are all fine ideas. My update is that I'm closing in on six years with the August Wilson 
Journal, so I'm stepping into more of an advisory capacity now, and we are cultivating new 
editors. We had two people5 step forward, which is good. I'm going to be moving into the 
background, but that does free me up for other projects.  

For example, Doc Goldblum’s son, Orin, has recently contacted me. Doc Goldblum 
is mentioned in four August Wilson plays, I believe. And so, as one of his descendants, Orin 
has contacted me and asked, “Would you be interested in hearing what I have to say?”  

In addition to being an August Wilson scholar my background is in journalism so I 
could probably be talked into taking on such projects in addition to staying in contact with 
all of you and writing up material. David and I are interested in writing up this conversation. 
So—without putting too much pressure on ourselves—annually or maybe a couple of times a 
year—if any of you would like to step forward and volunteer material and submit it to the 
journal or communicate with me, we can make sure that the new editors get it and we can run 
it through the process and take a look at it and get it out there. Get it on the record. 
 
Anderson: If I could just add something to that, if material becomes available gradually, we 
could do continuous updates. I don't know if you're planning to have the whole archive intro-
duced at once, or whether you're willing to make some of that available once you know that 
it's ready. 
 
Galloway: We know people are going to be really anxious to get into it, so we're now planning 
on opening the collection in the fall of 2022. A big grand opening. Of course, it all depends 
on the situation with the pandemic. 
 
Anderson: That would be perfect for us with the journal. Every time the journal comes out: 
Here's what's new that's available in the archive. 
 
Galloway: I like that a lot. Once the collection is open, we could highlight specific documents 
or stories we discovered.  
 
Gabler: I think all of these things are great. And I think what would really be helpful for the 
journal and for both sides is if we could use the fact that it's a physical-location-based collec-
tion and people are coming in. If we could let the researchers know about the August Wilson 

 
4 Christopher Rawson is a retired Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and long-time theater 

critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He and August were friends for many years. Rawson is currently actively 
involved in August Wilson House, which is dedicated to celebrating the “literary and personal legacy of August 
Wilson.” The initiative is also aimed toward serving as an arts center to “nurture the historic Hill District 
community,” along with artists and scholars influenced by Wilson’s work. 

5 Dr. Christopher Bell and Dr. Ladrica Menson-Furr will be taking the lead editor positions at the August 

Wilson Journal in August of 2021.  Drs. Downing and Anderson will move into advisory roles. 

http://augustwilsonhouse.org/


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Journal and recruit more of the peer-reviewed content because it is a scholarly journal and 
not a magazine. We want that peer-reviewed content, so while we’re telling people about the 
August Wilson archive, we can also encourage people to take the research that they're con-
ducting and consider submitting it to the August Wilson Journal. It's a very simple, low-bar 
way of operating. It's not like a big campaign or anything, but I think that could be really 
effective on both sides. 
 
Downing: That's a great insight, because it gives those people who are coming in to look at 
the archives a place to turn. Otherwise, otherwise they're doing this work and wondering 
“Where will I publish this?” Well, as a matter of fact, we can help. 
 
Daw: And it's an open-access journal, so that's also a benefit too. 
 
Galloway: One of the really creative ideas we have is what we're calling community scholars. 
We would love to tap into men and women who live in the Hill or live in Homewood, perhaps, 
and other places where we have connections with our Pitt Community Engagement Centers 
and support their work and their research in the archive in some creative way, whether it is 
through the written word, or something else. But should it be through the written word, it 
would be just a wonderful opportunity for non-scholars and maybe have an outlet for their 
work. Maybe that could turn out to be the August Wilson Journal in some fashion that remains 
to be seen. But that's an idea where we're trying to explore. 
 
Daw: And the journal is multimedia too, am I correct? There's been audio. 
 
Anderson: Yes, there’s been audio. 
 
Daw: So if there were a community researcher who maybe didn't write something, but maybe 
did a program at the CEC and we record it, we could include that in the journal if it meets 
your criteria. 
 
Gabler: The system can handle video as well. I'm not sure if we've done that but audio and 
video, pretty much any file type. Images are constrained more by the file size and whether or 
not people have the appropriate applications for viewing them, but media is not very limited 
by our system. 
 
Anderson: That's the end of my questions. Michael, anything? 
 
Downing: No, I'm satisfied. This has been a good session. Thank you all for your time. 
 
Galloway: Yes, this is wonderful. Let's touch base. Maybe we do should do this periodically. 
I'm sure you would like to know where we are on certain things, especially once we get an 
archivist in place. 
 
Downing: I think I can coax the new editors to get on the next call. All of this is really brand 
new. I talked with Chris Bell this past Sunday, and he had lots of questions. We're filtering 
through all of that, but it would be good to have those incoming editors on the next call. 
 
Daw: And by that time, our person should have started, so there will be new people on the 
archive side as well. 
 
Anderson: I'll be in touch with Bill and we'll organize the next Zoom. Thank you all very 
much. 



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Author Bios 

Dr. David Anderson is a retired Professor of English, having taught at Butler County 
Community College for 32 years. He is the author of Archetypal Figures in “The Snows of 
Kilimanjaro: Hemingway on Flight and Hospitality (Kent State University Press, 2019) and is 
Managing Editor of the August Wilson Journal. 

 
Dr. Michael Downing is Professor of English at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 

where he teaches August Wilson, Technical Writing, Journalism, Research Writing, and other 
English and writing classes. He has been studying the life and work of Mr. Wilson since 1992 
and is Lead Editor of the August Wilson Journal. 

 
 
 
 
 
 

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