Tennessee Williams

Born in Columbus, Mississippi, Williams moved to St. Louis, Missouri as a child. Williams’s literary career began early: at age sixteen, he won five dollars for an essay entitled “Can a Good Wife be a Good Sport?” Williams attended the University of Missouri, where he frequently entered writing contests as a source of extra income. But after Williams failed military training during junior year, his father pulled him out of college and put him to work in a factory. At age twenty-four, Williams suffered a nervous breakdown, left his job, and returned to college, studying at Washington University in St. Louis but finally graduating from the University of Iowa in 1938. Williams lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1939, writing for the Works Progress Administration. He later traveled to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. It was also in the late ’30s that Williams came out as a gay man. Although he had several serious long-term relationships, many of Williams’s romantic affairs were negatively influenced by his addiction to amphetamines, which he tried to use as a way of treating his depression. The playwright eventually died in New York after accidentally choking on a bottle cap. Still, he left behind over 30 plays, including well-known pieces like A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His legacy as a prolific and fearless writer endures to this day.