John Edgar Wideman

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  • Bibliography:
    27 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1983
  • Latest Book:
    October 2024
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Full Series List in Order

Homewood Trilogy

Damballah (Oct-1988)
Hiding Place (Jul-1998)

Book List in Order: 27 titles

  • Sent for You Yesterday

    A stunning novel in which "Mr. Wideman returns to the ghetto where he was raised and transforms it into a magical location...and establishes a mythological and symbolic link between character and landscape." --New York Times Book Review...

  • Brothers and Keepers

    In a study that is part autobiography and part social history, the author documents the life of his younger brother, Robby, who has been imprisoned for life without parole, discussing the reasons for his own success and his brother's tragedy...

  • A Glance Away

  • Damballah

    Homewood Trilogy

  • Reuben

    Reuben is a small man who, for little reward, helps people in big trouble. It is when he takes on Kewansa to try and get her child back from a man who has murdered a white man just to see what it was like, that his world starts to fall apart....

  • Fever

    By turns subtle and intense, disturbing and elusive, the stories in this collection are ultimately connected by themes of memory and loss, reality and fabrication, and by a richless of language that rests lightly on its carefully foundation....

  • Philadelphia Fire

    One of John Wideman’s most ambitious and celebrated works, the lyrical masterpiece and PEN/Faulkner winner inspired by the 1985 police bombing of the West Philadelphia row house owned by black liberation group Move.In 1985, police bombed a West Phi...

  • The Homewood Books

    Edgar Wideman’s The Homewood Books  is so named because they share characters, events, and locales, these two novels-- Hiding Place and Sent for You Yesterday -- and one collection of short stories --Damballah-- are set in the Homewood section ...

  • Stories of John Edgar Wideman

    A collection of stories by the author of A Glance Away, Hurry Home, Brothers and Keepers, Reuben, Fever, and Philadelphia Fire features tales of African Americans from all walks of life who reside in Homewood, a black section of Pittsburgh. 25,...



  • All Stories Are True

    Set mainly in the Pittsburgh district of Homewood, these 10 stories depict African Americans from all walks of life--ancestors, family, and lovers caught in the vortex of American history and haunted by their own particular demons. "(Wideman is) one ...

  • The Cattle Killing

    In plague-ridden eighteenth-century Philadelphia, a young itinerant black preacher searches for a mysterious, endangered African woman. His struggle to find her and save them both plummets them both into the nightmare of a society violently splitting...

  • The Best American Short Stories 1996

    A collection of short stories selected from national magazines and small literary journals features the work of authors such as Robert Olen Butler, Alice Adams, Rick Bass, Mary Gordon, Joyce Carol Oates, and Lynn Sharon Schwartz....

  • Hiding Place

    Homewood Trilogy

    A man lay dead in a parking lot. Tommy didn't kill him, but the police will shoot first and ask questions later. Mother Bess is kin, but she is a crazy, mean old lady hiding out high about the Homewood streets--streets that have taken away everything...

  • Two Cities

    A redemptive, healing novel, Two Cities brings to brilliant culmination the themes John Edgar Wideman has developed in fourteen previous acclaimed books. It is a story of bridges -- bridges spanning the rivers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, bridges ...

  • 20: The Best of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize

    The Drue Heinz Literature Prize was established in 1980 to encourage and support the writing and reading of short fiction. Over the past twenty years judges such as Robert Penn Warren, Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks...

  • 20: Twenty Best Of Drue Heinz Literature Prize

    The Drue Heinz Literature Prize was established in 1980 to encourage and support the writing and reading of short fiction. Over the past twenty years judges such as Robert Penn Warren, Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks...

  • My Soul Has Grown Deep

    In this vital and inspiring volume, John Edgar Wideman has brought together the first truly representative sampling of literature by African-American writers in the early centuries of our history. Reaching across periods, styles, and regional borders...

  • God's Gym

    In God's Gym, the celebrated author John Edgar Wideman offers stories that pulse with emotional electricity. The ten pieces here explore strength, both physical and spiritual. The collection opens with a man paying tribute to the quiet fortitude of h...

  • Fanon

    A philosopher, psychiatrist, and political activist, Frantz Fanon was a fierce, acute critic of racism and oppression. Born of African descent in Martinique in 1925, Fanon fought in defense of France during World War II but later against France in Al...



  • Briefs

    BRIEFS is a groundbreaking new collection of "microstories" from celebrated author John Edgar Wideman, previous winner of both the Rea and O. Henry awards saluting mastery of the short story form. Here he has assembled a masterful collage that explod...

  • Hurry Home

    In 1970, The New York Times wrote, "Hurry Home is a dazzling display...we have nothing but admiration for Mr. Wideman's talent." Wideman's second novel is the powerful and remarkably prescient story of a highly educated, multiracial man's struggle to...

  • The Lynchers

    Almost 30 years before 9/11, John Edgar Wideman published his third novel, a revolutionary and controversial story about four African-American men who hatch a terrorist plot to shake a complacent America to its foundations. They see their plan to lyn...

  • Writing to Save a Life

  • American Histories: Stories

    In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other. With characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel ...

  • You Made Me Love You

    A powerful and “stunning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) selection of the best of John Edgar Wideman’s short stories over his fifty-year career, representing the wide range of his intellectual and artistic pursuits.When John Edgar Wideman ...

  • Look For Me and I'll Be Gone: Stories

    *A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Book of the Year*From John Edgar Wideman, a modern “master of language” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a stunning story collection that spans a range of topics from Michael Jordan to Emmett Till, from c...

  • Slaveroad

    Major literary figure and “master of language” (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman uses his unique generational perspective to explore what he calls the “slaveroad,” a daunting, haunting reality that runs throughout American history.John ...

Award-Winning Books by John Edgar Wideman

Philadelphia Fire
1991 PEN/Faulkner Award -- Fiction
Sent for You Yesterday
1984 PEN/Faulkner Award -- Fiction


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

John Edgar Wideman has published 27 books.

The next book by John Edgar Wideman, Slaveroad, will be published in October 2024.

The first book by John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday, was published in January 1983.

Yes. John Edgar Wideman has 1 series.
Author Series
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