Hatcher Hughes(1883-1945)
- Writer
Playwright Hatcher Hughes was born in Pokeville, NC, in 1886. He
graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1907 and was hired
by the university as an English instructor. In 1909, after obtaining
his masters degree, he left the university and went to Columbia
University in New York, where in 1912 he organized a course in play
writing. In the early 1920s he spent his vacations in the Carolina
mountains, interacting with the locals and studying their lives and
culture. He wrote two plays about his experiences, "Ruint" (1925) and
"Hell-Bent for Heaven" (1923), which was a Broadway success, was later
made into a film
(Hell-Bent fer Heaven (1926))
and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His subsequent plays have met
with less success, although several were minor hits.
