In tandem with its production of August Wilson’s Fences, Shakespeare & Company will host a book signing, pre-show reception, and post-show talkback with Patti Hartigan, author of the forthcoming biography AUGUST WILSON: A Life, on Saturday, August 12 at 12:30 p.m.



By special arrangement with the author, publisher Simon & Schuster, and Lenox’s own The Bookstore, copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing three days in advance of its public release. Patrons will have the opportunity to meet Hartigan and have their books signed at the August 12 reception at the Tina Packer Playhouse, attend the 2 p.m. matinee of August Wilson’s Fences, and ask questions about both the show and Wilson following the performance.



AUGUST WILSON: A Life is the 1st authoritative biography of August Wilson, the most important and successful American playwright of the late 20th century, by a theater critic who knew him. Hartigan is an award-winning theater critic and arts reporter who spent many years on the staff of The Boston Globe. Early in her career as a theater critic for The Boston Globe she met Wilson at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center and would interview him several times over the course of two decades until his death in 2005, just after his sixtieth birthday.



AUGUST WILSON: A Life emerges from extensive research and interviews with friends, collaborators, actors, and family members. Hartigan’s original research challenges longtime assertions made by Wilson about his family’s history and reveals the toll of success on his personal life. AUGUST WILSON: A Life offers a full and overdue portrait of a complicated man’s utter devotion to his art and the people around him.



The book has been called “an exquisitely researched biography fully equal to its legendary subject” by Charles Johnson, MacArthur Fellow and National Book Award-winning author of Middle Passage, and “a must read for students of theater and African American literature” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University.



Tickets to Shakespeare & Company’s 2 p.m. production of August Wilson’s Fences must be purchased separately. The preshow book signing will include a cash bar and light hors d’oeuvres.