Green, Paul

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

1894–1981, American dramatist, b. Lillington, N.C., grad. Univ. of North Carolina, 1921. He is known for his realistic plays depicting the lives of blacks and white tenant farmers. His first full-length play, In Abraham's Bosom (1926; Pulitzer Prize) was followed by such works as The Field God (1927), The House of Connelly (1931), Johnny Johnson (with music by Kurt Weill, 1936), and Native Son (with Richard Wright, 1941). Green also wrote short stories and novels. His essays on the theater were collected in The Hawthorn Tree (1943), Dramatic Heritage (1953), and Drama and the Weather (1958).

See his Five Plays of the South (1963); study by B. H. Clark (1974).