Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are releasing today’s Chat in the Stacks with Temple alum and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright James Ijames as a pre-recorded conversation. In this in-depth interview, Dr. Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon asks James Ijames about his work and life.
Find the recording to view at your convenience here: https://library.temple.edu/watchpastprograms/show?id=05e0e010-803b-48fd-9121-afb200ea1983
We invite you to join us for the first Chat in the Stacks of the spring semester with special guest James Ijames, MFA ‘06. Ijames is a 2022 Pulitzer Prize recipient in the category of drama for his play Fat Ham, a reinvention of Hamlet that adapts Shakespeare’s drama onto a family barbecue in the American South.
About the speaker:
James Ijames is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, a director, and an educator.
He is the 2011 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist recipient and has two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Direction of a Play. Ijames is a 2015 Pew Fellow for Playwriting, the 2015 winner of the Terrance McNally New Play Award for WHITE, the 2015 Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize winner for ....Miz Martha, a 2017 recipient of the Whiting Award, a 2019 Kesselring Prize for Kill Move Paradise, a 2020 and 2022 Steinberg Prize and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama recipient.
Ijames was a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia’s first playwright producing collective. He received a BA in drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and an MFA in acting from Temple University. Ijames is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University. He resides in South Philadelphia.