Frederick Robert Kirwin
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Frederick Robert Kirwin | |
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| Born | October 12, 1942 |
| Nationality | American |
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Frederick Robert Kirwin (born October 12, 1942) is an American poet, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright.
Early life
Frederick Kirwin was born in Rochester, Pennsylvania to Frederick Bayard Kirwin from Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, and Roberta (née Webb) Kirwin from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has two siblings, Richard James Kirwin and Christine Thibodeau and nieces and nephews Beth Kirwin-Auman, Josh Kirwin, JusticeLee Auman and Bryan, Gabrielle, and Kyle Thibodeau. His father, Frederick Bayard Kirwin, was of Scottish, English, Irish, and Ibero-Hispanic descent and attended the University of Alabama where he played basketball under coach Bear Bryant, after which he served in WWII in the Army of the United States of America (1944-1946), where he was a Corporal in Battery C, 569th Field Artillery Battalion. After the war, he worked as an engineer for Curtis Wright, then moved to Florida where he worked as District Sales Manager and independent contractor for Fuller Brush, Inc. Roberta Kirwin was of Scottish, English, Irish, and Jewish descent. (Her first English ancestor was a British Army Officer, James Webb, who came to this country about the year 1754, as an officer in the British army, bringing with him his wife and two children and settling at Philadelphia. John Webb was killed in Quebec in 1759, and after his death his wife went to friends in Franklin county, Pennsylvania, where she was killed by the Indians, and her son James, then a boy of eleven years of age, was taken prisoner by the Indians and lived with them until he was eighteen, when he succeeded in making his escape and returned to Franklin county.) Roberta Kirwin graduated Summa Cum Laude at age 18 from the University of Pittsburgh and earned a Masters Degree in Economics at the University of South Florida. She was a television producer/director for WEDU-Ch. 3, producing, scripting and directing a 2nd Grade Reading program that was broadcast nationally, and she was the Television Coordinator for the West Florida Education District. She was producer/moderator of School Slate broadcast from the former WSUN studios on the St. Petersburg Pier, and was a member of the National Association of Women Broadcasters, Delta Kappa Gamma, and President of the South Hills Alumni Association.
Education
Frederick Kirwin graduated from Boca Ciega High School in St. Petersburg, FL, in 1960, and later attended Florida State University in Tallahassee where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in History and International Affairs, and a Master of Arts in Government. He passed the Prelims for the PhD program at Florida State in Government, received a teaching fellowship and published a scholarly article with Richard Gray, PhD, on the “Presidential Succession in Chile: 1817-1966,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), and later resigned from the program, instead opting to accept a Shubert Fellowship in Theatre, eventually earning an MFA in Playwriting.[1]
Mr. Kirwin has always written poetry and began writing plays in 1967; and in an interview in the Huffington Post, he said, “I was working on a Ph.D. in political science, spent the summer in Paris writing poetry and my first play, took the play to the playwright in residence at FSU, Frank Gagliano, who gave me a Shubert Fellowship and sent my work to Gilbert Parker, the legendary agent, who took me on as a client and sent my play Billy to Playwrights Horizons where Bob Moss produced it, Barnet Kellman directed it, and Sudie Bond starred in it. Sudie then introduced me to Richard Barr and Edward Albee who invited me to his foundation in Montauk for five summers where Edward introduced me to my partner of many years, the celebrated painter Scott Kahn.”
Selected Works
Books include, Songs Of the Garden of Delights (poetry); Body Carnal (poetry); Body Sacred (poetry); Talking About Diana’s Death (novel), Billy and Dakota (love story); Dog Bites Man (murder mystery and soon to be feature film), Past Love, Praise, Indifference, Blame (play). Production of plays includes, Billy (Playwrights Horizons, NYC); Swan Dive (Playwrights Horizons, NYC); Dog Bites Man (Marlborough Theatre, Brighton, UK, and later at the Rock Theatre, Brighton, U.K.); The Lottery (Tristan Bates Theatre, Covent Garden, London, UK, and later at Fox Theatre, London, UK); Talking about Diana (King's Head Theatre, London, UK, and later at the Camden People's Theatre, London, UK).[2]
Awards
Kirwin was the recipient of a Shubert Fellowship; The Dramatists Guild Fund Award in honor of Mr. Richard Rodgers; five Edward Albee Foundation Fellowships; and was a Playwright-in- Residence at North Carolina School of the Arts.[3]
Personal life
In 1975, Edward Albee introduced Kirwin to artist, Scott Kahn while Kahn and Kirwin were visiting Albee at the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, New York. Kahn and Kirwin were married in 2020 in a civil ceremony via Zoom during the COVID-19 Pandemic from Kahn's cousin's attic where Kahn and Kirwin then resided in New Rochelle, New York[4]. The ceremony was officiated by Will Blythe, the noted New York Times best-selling author and former literary editor of Esquire magazine.
References
- ↑ Caryn B. Davis, "Scott Kahn - An Artist's Life"; INK Publications, October 2012
- ↑ de Luca, Théo (2022). SCOTT KAHN. Almine Rech Editions. ISBN 978-2-930573-44-1.
- ↑ History of Butler County Pennsylvania, 1895, Biographical Sketches, Chapter 72, p. 1056
- ↑ THE HUFFINGTON POST, Talking About Diana...20 Years Later, at MRT, Roger Gonzalez , 11/09/2017
External links
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