Ethnicity 1: African American

Nationality 1: American

Birthdate: 1941

The African American writer John Edgar Wideman was born on June 14, 1941, in Washington, D.C., the eldest of five children of Edgar and Bette Wideman. The family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was later to set much of his fiction (especially in the Homewood ghetto). He attended Peabody High School, excelling in his studies and being made captain of the basketball team. He won a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to study psychology but soon changed to English, graduating in 1963. During his undergraduate career, Wideman made the Big Five Basketball Hall of Fame, won the university's creative writing prize, and earned membership of Phi Beta Kappa. He received a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University in England, becoming only the second African American to receive such recognition. He gained a B.Phil. in...