Wikipedia

Darryl Pinckney

Darryl Pinckney (born 1953 in Indianapolis, Indiana) is an American novelist, playwright, and essayist.

Darryl Pinckney
Born1953 (age 71–72)
Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationColumbia University (BA)
GenreNovelist, playwright
Notable worksHigh Cotton (1992)
Notable awardsWhiting Award (1986); Vursell Award for Distinguished Prose from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1994)
PartnerJames Fenton
Website
darrylpinckney.com

Early life

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Pinckney grew up in a middle-class African-American family in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he attended local public schools. He was educated at Columbia University in New York City.[1]

Career

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Some of Pinckney's first professional works were theatre texts, plays developed in collaboration with director Robert Wilson.[2] These included the produced works of The Forest (1988) and Orlando (1989). Pinckney returned to theatre with Time Rocker (1995).[3]

His first novel was High Cotton (1992), a semi-autobiographical novel about "growing up black and bourgeois" in 1960s America. His second novel was Black Deutschland (2016), about a young gay black man in Berlin in the late 1980s, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.[4]

Pinckney has published several collections of essays covering topics such as African-American literature, politics, race, and other cultural issues. He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, Granta, Slate, and The Nation. He frequently explores issues of racial and sexual identities, as expressed in literature and society.[citation needed]

Pinckney's memoir Come Back in September was published in 2022. Rachel Cooke in an interview for The Observer described reading it as "like being at a particularly fabulous literary party. ...But the real star of the show – the book's constant and slightly terrifying presence – is the critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick, Pinckney’s friend of more than three decades and the key that first turned the lock on his exciting New York life."[5]

Awards

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Personal life

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Pinckney is gay[12] and lives with his partner, English poet James Fenton; the couple has been together since 1989.[13] Pinckney currently lives in New York City, but previously lived with Fenton in Oxfordshire, England.[14]

Bibliography

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Books

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Selected essays

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  • "England, Whose England?". Granta (16: Science). Summer 1985. (Subscription Required)
  • "Lonely Hearts Club". Harper's. Vol. February 2010. February 2010.
  • "The Ethics of Admiration: Arendt, McCarthy, Hardwick, Sontag". The Threepenny Review. 135. Fall 2013.
  • "Some Different Ways of Looking at Selma". The New York Review of Books. 62 (3). February 19, 2015.
  • "Escaping Blackness". The New York Review of Books. 67 (5). March 26, 2020.
  • "'We Must Act Out Our Freedom'". The New York Review of Books. 67 (13). August 20, 2020.
  • "A Society on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown". The New York Review of Books. 67 (17). November 5, 2020.

Theatre texts

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References

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  1. ^ "For Darryl Pinckney '88, History Is Personal | Columbia College Today". www.college.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  2. ^ The Center for the Humanities (Dec 12, 2017). "Essay Seminar: Darryl Pinckney". Essay Seminar: Darryl Pinckney. Retrieved 2024-08-25.
  3. ^ "Robert Wilson". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2 May 2024. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
  4. ^ Haslett, Adam (2016-02-05). "Darryl Pinckney's 'Black Deutschland'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-05-12.
  5. ^ Cooke, Rachel (November 6, 2022). "Interview | 'A more anarchic city': Darryl Pinckney on New York literary life in the 1970s". The Observer. Retrieved September 1, 2025.
  6. ^ "Darryl Pinckney | WHITING AWARDS". Whiting.org. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  7. ^ Buckley, Gail Lumet (November 8, 1992). "TIMES BOOK PRIZES 1992 : ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD for First Fiction : On 'High Cotton'". Los Angeles Times.
  8. ^ Darryl Pinckney page at United Artists.
  9. ^ Labrise, Megan (2023-02-01). "National Book Critics Circle announces finalists for publishing year 2022". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
  10. ^ "2022 Winners & Finalists". National Book Critics Circle. Archived from the original on September 28, 2023. Retrieved 2024-09-19.
  11. ^ "Kingsolver, Pinkckney win James Tait Back Prizes". Books+Publishing. 2023-07-27. Retrieved 2023-07-29.
  12. ^ "Darryl Pinckney's Intimate Study of Black History". The New Yorker. November 26, 2019.
  13. ^ Jenkins, David (November 18, 2007). "James Fenton: 21st century renaissance man". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  14. ^ Pinckney, Darryl (February 8, 2010). "Lonely Hearts Club". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  15. ^ Smith, Zadie (November 26, 2019). "Darryl Pinckney's Intimate Study of Black History". The New Yorker.
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