Tracy Letts is an accomplished American playwright and screenwriter, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County. Raised in Durant, Oklahoma, Letts was born to a family of artists, including his mother Billie Letts, a best-selling author, and his father Dennis Letts, a college professor, actor, and director. His brother Shawn is a jazz musician and composer, and Letts has another brother named Dana as well. After graduating from Durant High School in the early 1980s, Letts moved to Dallas, where he worked in telemarketing and waited tables while pursuing his passion for acting.
Letts' career took off when he moved to Chicago at the age of 20 and began working with the Steppenwolf and Famous Door theaters. He was a founding member of Bang Bang Spontaneous Theater and wrote his first play, Killer Joe, in 1991. The play premiered at the Next Lab Theater in Chicago and has since been performed in over 15 countries in at least 12 languages. In 2008, Letts won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony Award for August: Osage County, which has been adapted into a feature film starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
In addition to his work as a playwright, Letts is an accomplished actor and has been a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company since 2002. He won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 2013. Letts has also appeared in several films, including The Lovers and Lady Bird, and had a role on the television show Homeland. His other writing credits include The Minutes, Linda Vista, Mary Page Marlowe, Man from Nebraska, Bug, and Superior Donuts. Letts' work often explores moral and spiritual questions and is inspired by the plays of Tennessee Williams and the novels of William Faulkner and Jim Thompson. He considers sound to be a powerful storytelling tool in theater.