Pulitzer Prize Recipient Author. He is remembered as an award-winning playwright and screenwriter as well as a journalist and novelist. Born William Motter Inge, he enrolled after graduating high school at Independence Junior College and later transferred to the University of Kansas at Lawrence, where he earned a B.A. degree in speech and drama in 1935. He received a scholarship to begin a master's degree at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville but left being discouraged about his dream of becoming an actor. He returned to Kansas, working for a time as a laborer in highway construction before teaching English and drama in Columbus, Kansas. He returned to Peabody College to complete his M. A.; taught at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri; and worked as a drama and music critic for the "St. Louis Times". While writing for the "Times", he met the playwright Tennessee Williams, whose work inspired him to write his first play, "Farther Off from Heaven," which was performed in Dallas, Texas in 1947. The same year, he joined Alcoholic Anonymous. The plot of this play was later reworked for "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs". After this success, he was led to write "Come Back, Little Sheba", which was performed on the Broadway stage in New York City in 1950 for 190 performances and earned him many accolades. The play was adapted to film in 1953 with the same name. This play as well as later plays were set in small midwestern towns like Independence and were adapted to film: "Picnic" in 1953, "Bus Stop" in 1956, and the biographical piece, "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" in 1957. The 1955 play "Bus Stop" received a Tony Awards nomination for Best Play. For "Picnic", Inge received the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and his movie "Splendor in the Grass" earned him the Academy Award Oscar for Best Screenplay in 1961. As the mood of the country changed in the 1960s and 1970s, his plays became less received, and he left New York City for Hollywood, where he found little in the way of prospects in the film industry. Returning to teaching, he accepted a position at the University of California at Irvine and wrote two novels. "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff" in 1970 and "My Son is a Splendid Driver" in 1971. Falling into depression, he ended his life in the home he shared with his sister in Hollywood. The Inge family donated his Oscar to the theatre department at the University of Kansas, which built the William Inge Memorial Theatre in his honor. Similarly, the Independence, Kansas Community College founded the William Inge Center for the Arts on their campus in 1982. With donations from his sister, The William Inge Collection began in 1965 at University of Kansas, archiving his professional papers including unpublished short stories and plays. Celebrating William Inge Theater Festival's 40th anniversary, selections of his plays were performed in April of 2023.