New Orleans, LA — March 29 - April 1, 2026

Sigma Tau Delta 2026 Convention

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.

Born as Thomas Lanier Williams III in 1911, Tennessee Williams spent his early years writing in relative obscurity until his luck changed at age 33. That’s when The Glass Menagerie opened on Broadway in New York City in 1944 and changed his life forever.

What followed was nothing short of an extraordinary ascent to fame. Williams wrote and published a series of plays that would come to define 20th century American drama: A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955, Sweet Bird of Youth in 1959, and The Night of the Iguana in 1961.

Williams had a gift for removing the polished veneer of Southern gentility to expose the raw, and often desperate, humanity underneath. His characters—the fragile Blanche DuBois, the explosive Stanley Kowalski (both of A Streetcar Named Desire), and the tortured Brick Pollitt (of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)—quickly became icons of American theater. A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, for which Williams won Pulitzer Prizes for drama (1948 and 1955, respectively), often challenge Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey into Night for the accolade of being the greatest American play ever written.

Williams’ major works made a successful jump to celluloid, too, bringing his intense psychological dramas to even wider audiences. But Williams was more than just a playwright: He was a well-rounded artist who wrote haunting short stories, evocative poetry, thought-provoking essays, and candid memoirs.

As the years passed, Williams began to experiment with more avant-garde styles that didn’t quite capture the public’s imagination the way his earlier masterpieces had. Still, his place in American letters was secure. In 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Alongside Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams is a titan of theater who transformed how we see ourselves on stage.