author
Lynn Riggs
1899–1954
Best remembered for writing the play that became Oklahoma!, this Cherokee playwright brought the people, language, and landscapes of the Southwest vividly to the stage. His work helped shape American theater while keeping a strong sense of place and identity.
1 Audiobook
Big lake : A tragedy in two parts
by Lynn Riggs
About the author
Born in Claremore, in what was then Indian Territory, Lynn Riggs became an American playwright, poet, and screenwriter whose work was deeply tied to Oklahoma and the Southwest. He is most widely known for Green Grow the Lilacs (1931), the play that later inspired the landmark musical Oklahoma!.
Riggs was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and that heritage mattered in both his life and writing. Many of his plays drew on the voices, tensions, humor, and everyday lives of people in the region he knew best, giving his work a distinctive sense of atmosphere and character.
Along with writing for the stage, he also worked in film and published poetry. Though Green Grow the Lilacs remains his most famous work, Lynn Riggs is remembered more broadly as a major literary voice of Oklahoma and as an important early Native playwright in American theater.