Artist Bio

Horton Foote (March 14, 1916 – March 4, 2009) had his first play, Texas Town, produced off-Broadway in 1941. Since then he has had plays produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway and at many regional theaters. Plays include The Last of the Thorntons, The Young Man From Atlanta, The Chase, The Traveling Lady, The Trip to Bountiful, Night Seasons, Tomorrow, The Habitation of Dragons, The Orphan’s Home Cycle, Roots in a Parched Ground, Convicts, Lily Dale, The Widow Claire, Court­ship, Laura Dennis, Vernon Early, The Roads to Home, The Carpetbagger’s Children, The Day Emily Married and Dividing the Estate. He received Academy Awards for his screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay, Tender Mercies. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his play The Young Man From Atlanta, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway and the Outer Critics Circle Special Achievement Award for the Signature Theatre Company’s series of his plays. In 1996 he was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame. In 1998 he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at the same time received from the Academy the Gold Medal of Drama for the entire body of his work. In 2000 he received the PEN/Laura Fels Foundation Award for Drama, New York State Governor’s Arts Award and in December of that year he was given the National Medal of Arts Award by President Clinton. In 2006 his play The Trip to Bountiful won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival, and he was given the Drama Desk Lifetime Achievement Award for his body of work. His memoirs, Farewell and Beginnings, are published by Scribner.

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