Le Wilhelm attended Southwest Missouri State University, where he received Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Theatre in 1970 and a Master of Arts degree in Theatre in 1975. He then attended Florida State University, completing course work for a Master of Fine Arts degree with dual emphasis on writing and directing. In 1976 he was honored with the David Belasco Award for theatrical expertise. While at the ETC Theatre Company in Tallahassee, Florida, he received the Best of the Year award for his direction of Matt Swan’s Home in Illinois (1979). The following year, Mr. Wilhelm again received the Best of the Year award for his own 1950s musical adaptation and direction of the morality play Everyman. Mr. Wilhelm was also awarded a State of Florida Council of the Arts grant for dramatic writing in 1983.

In 1985, Mr. Wilhelm arrived in New York City and immediately became involved with backers’ auditions for his full-length play Cucumbers, which was subsequently presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He became the Executive Artistic Director of Love Creek Productions, an Equity Tier nonprofit theatre company, that same year.

Mr. Wilhelm’s plays have been performed in hundreds of productions throughout the United States and Canada. He has also enjoyed productions of his works internationally. His plays The Missouri Trilogy and The Power and the Glory have been translated into Italian, the latter of which recently ran successfully in Rome, Italy. His New York directing credits include the Off-Broadway run of Emmy Award-winner Bill Elverman’s The Mask and the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winner D.L. Coburn’s A Virgin Year.

Mr. Wilhelm recently served as guest speaker at Southwest Missouri State University, concurrent with their productions of his Found in the Garden: Fragments of Shrapnel and Pie Supper. He has also served as judge for the Trial Balloon Festival (Kalamazoo, Michigan) and as judge/lecturer for the Porter Fleming Literary Competition at the Greater Augusta Arts Festival (Georgia). In New York City, he has served as a guest lecturer at a symposium for Pen and Brush.

Dozens of Mr. Wilhelm’s plays have been honored as finalists in the Off-Off-Broadway Original Short Play Festival, and chosen for publication by Samuel French, Inc., in 1988 and each consecutive year from 1992 to 2003. His work has also been published in the Smith and Kraus Best Stage Scenes and Best Stage Monologues series for the past several years. His latest book, Eight Plays from the Heartland, will be published by Samuel French in 2003.

Mr. Wilhelm is working on several new projects, among them a book of women’s monologues entitled Women on the Verge, and a one-act play, No Fires in Philadelphia, Mississippi. His new full-length projects include A Death in the Juniper Grove, in which three people must face a mysterious death from their past; Damsels Distressed, where sexual freedom collides with traditional values; and a drama on the life of American expressionist Mary Cassatt, A Palette of Paradoxes.