Eleemosynary (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Lee Blessing was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 4, 1949. He grew up in a conventional midwestern family, where, ironically, there was little attention paid to the arts. Despite his parents' lack of interest in drama, they were very supportive of Blessing's chosen career and always attended his plays. Blessing wrote his first play while he was still in high school, which was prompted by his desire to avoid a thirty-page writing assignment on a topic that held little interest for him. After graduation, he attended the University of Minnesota for two years and then transferred to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English, with an emphasis on poetry. Blessing then headed back to the Midwest to attend the University of Iowa from 1974 to 1979. He obtained a master of fine arts in English in his first years; then, while working on his MFA in speech and theater, he taught playwriting. He went on to teach playwriting at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis from 1986 to 1988. In 1986, Blessing married Jeanne Blake and became stepfather to her two children.

Blessing's style and subject matter are often eclectic, as he focuses on public and private politics and the intricacies of human relationships. One of his most noted plays, A Walk in the Woods (1988), which deals with the differences between American idealism and Russian common sense, received Tony Award, Olivier Award, and Pulitzer Prize nominations. A Walk in the Woods also ran on Broadway, in Moscow, and in London, starring the late British actor Sir Alec Guinness, and was aired on the Public Broadcasting System's American Playhouse. Another of Blessing's celebrated plays, Eleemosynary (1987), which explores the nature of familial relationships, earned Blessing a 1997 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Writing and garnered three others for production, direction, and lead performance. The play appears in a collection titled Four Plays (1991), along with Independence (1985), Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music (1990), and Riches (1991).

Blessing has written other works for stage, film, and television and has earned numerous awards and much acclaim. He has received the American Theatre Critics Award, the Great American Play Award, and the George and Elisabeth Marton Award, among others. Three of his plays have also been cited in Time magazine's list of the year's ten best. Blessing has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim, Bush, McKnight, and Jerome foundations. His plays have been performed at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. His script Cooperstown was made into a film that aired on Turner Network Television and, in 1993, won Blessing the Humanitas Prize and three nominations for Cable Ace Awards. Blessing's work has been produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Old Globe, and the Alliance Theatre Company. He moved to Manhattan in 2001 and later became head of the graduate playwriting program at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.