[AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY & LITERATURE] WILSON, August; Nick Flournoy, Curtiss Porter (et al, eds)

Connection. Journal of the Centre Ave. Poets Theatre. Volume 1, no. 1 [January 1968]

Pittsburgh: Centre Ave. Poets Theatre, 1968. First Edition. Quarto. Tape-backed printed card wrappers; 32pp. Mimeographed. Moderate external soil; internally clean, tight and ummarked; Very Good.

Premier issue of this short-lived Black Arts journal (OCLC records are indeterminate, but it appears only two or three issues were published; starting with the Spring 1968 issue the imprint changed to "The Afro-American Institute"). Almost certainly the first appearance in print of Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright August Wilson, whose name also appears on the masthead as "Assistant Chief Editor" under Nick Flournoy. "Connection" was the organ of the Centre Avenue Poets' Theatre, which would evolve into the Black Horizons Theater, the epicenter of Pittsburgh's Black Arts community in the Sixties and early Seventies. It was also the site of the premier of Wilson's first produced play, "Recycle," in 1973. Other contributors to this issue include Charles P. Willliams, Nick Flournoy, Rob Penny, Deirdre Hamilton, and others.

The chronology of Wilson's earliest work is imprecise, but his four poems included here ("The Visit," "Circles and Sex," "A Poem for Two Wars," and "For Malxolm X and Others") are certainly among his first, if not his first, published works. Though Wilson had begun writing poetry a few years earlier, even submitting some of it for publication, we can trace no record of his having appeared in print prior to 1968. Wilson would of course go on to play a central role in the development of Black theatre in the U.S., most notably with his 10-play "Pittsburgh Cycle," which included the Pulitzer Prize-winners "Fences" (1985) and "The Piano Lesson" (1987).

Connection, surely published in a tiny run for distribution within Pittsburgh's Hill District arts community, is truly rare: of the half-dozen OCLC institutions with any recorded holdings, all appear to start with the "Spring 1968" issue published under the imprint of the Afro-American Institute. No examples of this inaugural issue with the "Centre Ave. Poets Theatre" imprint has been recorded, even at University of Pittsburgh which holds Wilson's papers. Not in Danky.

Price: $1,750.00

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