Ed Bullins ‘89

Ed Bullins ‘89 (Antioch College, BA) won The Legacy Playwrights Awards, which aims to honor and advocate for elder playwrights who have fallen out of the public eye. Bullins is an African American playwright and author who began his professional playwriting career in 1965 with the production of How Do You Do, Dialect Determinism (or The Rally), and Clara’s Ole Man at the Firehouse Repertory Theatre in San Francisco. He later became the resident playwright and associate director at Robert Macbeth’s New Lafayette Theatre in New York City. Bullins also headed the Black Theatre Workshop. Bullins also edited Black Theatre Magazine. Some other plays of Bullins include It Has No Choice, In the Wine Time, Goin ‘ a Buffalo, A Son Come Home, The Electronic Nigger, and Clara’s Ole Man, which collectively won the Vernon Rice Drama Desk Award, and The Taking of Miss Janie, for which he received both an Obie Award and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Bullins has received Guggenheim Fellowships, Rockefeller Foundation playwriting grants, an AUDELCO Award, a National Endowment for the Arts playwriting grant, and others. Before retiring, Bullins was a Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Northeastern University in Boston.

Read more about the award here.