A.R. Gurney (b. November 1, 1930) is an American playwright and novelist. Born in Buffalo, New York, Gurney, a graduate of Nichols School, attended Williams College and the Yale School of Drama, after which he began teaching Humanities at MIT. He began writing plays such as Scenes from American Life, Children, and The Middle Ages while at MIT, but it was his great success with The Dining Room that allowed him to write full-time. The Dining Room is a complicated play with six actors playing a multitude of characters in overlapping scenes set in the singular title location.

Since The Dining Room, Gurney has written a number of plays, most of them concerning WASPs of the American northeast, particularly New England. They include:

• What I Did Last Summer
• The Cocktail Hour
• The Perfect Party
• Another Antigone
• Sweet Sue
• Love Letters
• The Old Boy
• The Snow Ball (based on his novel) ISBN 0881842141
• A Cheever Evening (based on stories by John Cheever)
• Later Life
• Sylvia
• The Fourth Wall
• Far East
• Ancestral Voices
• Buffalo Gal
• Mrs. Farnsworth
• O Jerusalem
• Screen Play
• Ancestral Voices

Gurney has also written several novels; in addition to the abovementioned The Snow Ball, they include:

• The Gospel According to Joe
• Entertaining Strangers ISBN 0385125518

In 2006, Gurney was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

External links

• Entry at Literary Encyclopedia

1930 births | Living people | American novelists | American dramatists and playwrights | American Theatre Hall of Fame inductees | People from Buffalo, New York | Members of The American Academy of Arts and Letters