James Schevill

James Erwin Schevill (June 10, 1920 – January 30, 2009) was an American poet, critic, playwright and professor at San Francisco State University and Brown University, and the recipient of Guggenheim and Ford Foundation fellowships.

Summary He wrote more than 10 volumes of poetry, 30 plays, many essays, a novel, and biographies of Bern Porter and Sherwood Anderson. His plays include Lovecraft's Follies (1971) (based on the life and work of Providence horror writer H. P. Lovecraft), The Ushers, Mother O, Shadows of Memory, The Last Romantics, Cathedral of Ice, The House on F Street and others. He received a literary award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for his plays. He also wrote the libretto for Jerome Rosen's opera.

He was visiting Freiburg, Germany, in 1938 when the Kristallnacht riots occurred, and the experience led him into writing and poetry. Instead he went on to teach at California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco State University, where he headed the Poetry Center, and at Brown University until his retirement.

In 1981 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art. His contributions to the theater began with his strong involvement in the Actors Workshop in San Francisco, and his founding of Wastepaper Theater at Brown University as well as his collaborations with Trinity Reporatory Theater in Providence. He suffered a severe stroke in 1999 which made him a wheelchair user. He died in Berkeley, California, in January 2009.