Lanford Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri, on April 13, 1937. He was five when his parents divorced. His father moved to California, and Wilson lived with his mother until 1956. Wilson attended Southwest Missouri State College from 1955 to 1956 and San Diego State College from 1956 to 1957; he planned on being an artist, although he had done some acting in high school. When he was nineteen, Wilson moved to Chicago, where he was employed as an illustrator at an advertising agency. He had been writing stories on his lunch hours and gathering rejection slips, when he suddenly realized that the story he was writing was not a story but a play. He has considered himself a playwright ever since.

Since he had no real knowledge about the writing of plays, Wilson enrolled at the University of Chicago to learn about plays and playwriting. After he moved to New York in...