Tennessee Williams

An item at American Writers Museum

Tennessee Williams wrote poignant plays about people who won't accept reality -and how reality ultimately shatters their delusions. For example, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) maintains a fragile veneer of snobbery and flirtation that masks a multitude of insecurities and anxieties. The play earned Williams his first Pulitzer Prize. He won a second for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).

New York Times theater critic Frank Rich praised the playwright's "extraordinarily fecund and lyrical poetry, his mastery of dramatic moments and effects, and his ability to raise lowly characters to almost mythic size."

AMERICAN VOICES

An exhibit at American Writers Museum

American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.

This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.

American Writers Museum