By Felix Hoover

For YourNewsColumbus

Posted 09-21-09

 

When Wil Haygood was growing up, entertainment at the Lincoln Theatre was a short walk from his home on the Near East Side.

Now, folks will be coming from around the country to watch him at the historic venue for the unveiling of his latest biography Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson.

Haygood, a staff writer for the Washington Post, will conduct a free reading from the book at 7 p.m. October 9 at the theater, 769 E. Long St. A book-signing and reception will follow in the second-floor ballroom of the recently revived building.

The theater had been shut down for four decade a $13.5 million renovation made it ready for reopening in June.

Haygood had been anything but dormant during the Lincoln's down years.

Besides working through the journalistic ranks at several newspapers, he crafted his first award-winning biography King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., which was named a New York Times Notable Book.

He followed that success with another biography, In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr., which won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award and the ASCAP Deems-Taylor Outstanding Musical Biography Award and was named Nonfiction Book of the Year by the Black Caucus of the American Library. Association. He also penned his family memoir, The Haygoods of Columbus, which received the Great Lakes Book Award.

"Sweet Thunder represents the third biography in a trilogy that I had envisioned, so I am happy to have these books out," Haygood said in a phone conversation with YourNewsColumbus. "Adam Clayton Powell, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sugar Ray Robinson represent crossover artists and rebels in their own right, so their stories become quintessentially American stories."

Haygood has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his newspaper work, and an Alicia Patterson Fellow. He has been a visiting writer at several colleges, including his collegiate alma mater, Miami University in Oxford. He attended Miami U. after graduating from Franklin Heights High School.