Margaret Edson

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Margaret Edson on PBS (April 14, 1999).

Margaret Edson (b. July 4, 1961 in Washington, D.C.) is an American playwright. She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Wit, about a John Donne scholar who is hospitalized for and dying of ovarian cancer.

Edson graduated with a B.A. in Renaissance History from Smith College, and received a master's in English literature from Georgetown University. While she was writing "Wit," she held a variety of jobs that were unconnected to the theater, including bicycle shop sales clerk and volunteer ESL teacher. At the time of the first New York production of Wit in late 1998, Edson was a kindergarten teacher at Centennial Place Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia, where she still teaches.

After Edson's win of the Pulitzer Prize she received a large amount of publicity, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.

Edson's romantic partner is Linda Merrill, a curator at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. They are the parents of two boys.