Charles Fuller

Charles Henry Fuller, Jr., was born in Philadelphia on March 5, 1939, the son of Charles Henry and Lillian (Anderson) Fuller. The son of a printer, Fuller was educated in Philadelphia, attended Villanova University, then served in the U.S. Army from 1959 to 1962. In 1962, he married Miriam A. Nesbitt, and they had two children, Charles III and David. He resumed his studies at LaSalle in Philadelphia from 1965 to 1967 and went on to become the cofounder and codirector of the Afro-American Arts Theatre in Philadelphia from 1967 to 1971. In 1982, LaSalle awarded him an honorary degree after the stage success of A Soldier’s Play (1981). Honorary degrees than followed in 1983 from Villanova University and in 1965 from Chestnut Hill College as Fuller became one of Philadelphia’s most famous writers. He was appointed professor of African-American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Fuller has earned a number of grants and awards besides the Obie Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1982. Also in 1982, he won the Audelco Award as best playwright. That same year, A Soldier’s Play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer Circle Critics Award, and the Theatre Club Award. The film adaptation, A Soldier’s Story, won the Edgar Allan Poe Mystery Award for 1985. Fuller had grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1976. He was named a Guggenheim Foundation fellow for 1977-1978. He has also been active in the International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists (PEN), the Writers Guild of America, the Dramatists Guild, and the Dramatist Guild Foundation. – enotes