The Writer’s Road: Selections from the Sam Shepard papers
The Wittliff Collections are home to the major archive of Sam Shepard, one of the world’s most widely produced—and considered one of the greatest living—American playwrights.
The Writer’s Road is the first-ever comprehensive exhibition from this extensive and illuminating archive, and it celebrates the forthcoming book in the Wittliff’s Southwestern Writers Collection Series: Two Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark. Edited by Texas State faculty member Chad Hammett, Two Prospectors presents selected correspondence and photographs from Shepard’s archive, chronicling the decades-long friendship between Shepard and Dark, who is Shepard’s former father-in-law from his marriage to actress O-Lan Jones. The Writer’s Road exhibition includes Wittliff materials used by filmmaker Treva Wurmfeld to make the documentary, Shepard & Dark, which won the prize for Best Documentary Feature at the 2012 Woodstock Film Festival, among other awards.Together, the exhibition and new book offer fascinating revelations and insights into the private life, working methods, and creative career of this Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, short-story writer, screenwriter, director, musician, and Academy Award-nominated actor.
