NAMES IN THE NEWS : Pulitzer Playwright to Divorce

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson says his nine-year marriage could not compete with his devotion to work.

Wilson said Tuesday he would soon move to Seattle without his wife, school social worker Judy Oliver, and that they planned to divorce.

For the last five years, Wilson said, he has been home only about three months a year.

‘It’s real hard to maintain a marriage and do the work at the same time,” said Wilson. “I was never there for her.”

Wilson, whose plays chronicle black experience in 20th-Century America, has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The first was in 1987 for “Fences,” and the second in April for “The Piano Lesson.”