August Wilson has died.

August Wilson, the greatest American playwright possibly to ever live, and certainly to have lived until yesterday, died of cancer.

His great life's work, a series of plays taking place in each decade of the twentieth century in different Pittsburgh neighborhoods, was complete.

I wrote this in the comments on John's blog, where he posted an obituary:

It is horrible to no longer be able to say he is the greatest living playwright. I still maintain he is the greatest American playwright.

His plays all premiered (previewed? Am I fucking up my theatre vocab?) at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, and I got to see one of them (Will says it was Seven Guitars). The next one, King Hedley II, we missed, and I never quite got over that. And not just because we would have gotten to meet Tony Todd.