Tennessee Williams
Posthumous recognition

From February 1 to July 21, 2011, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the home of Williams's archive, exhibited 250 of his personal items. The exhibit, titled "Becoming Tennessee Williams", included a collection of Williams manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and artwork. The Ransom Center holds the earliest and largest collections of Williams's papers, including all of his earliest manuscripts, the papers of his mother Edwina Williams, and those of his long-time agent Audrey Wood.

In late 2009, Williams was inducted into the Poets' Corner at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. Performers and artists who took part in his induction included Vanessa Redgrave, playwright John Guare, Eli Wallach, Sylvia Miles, Gregory Mosher, and Ben (Griessmeyer) Berry.

The Tennessee Williams Theatre in Key West, Florida, is named for him. The Tennessee Williams Key West Exhibit on Truman Avenue houses rare Williams memorabilia, photographs, and pictures including his famous typewriter.

At the time of his death, Williams had been working on a final play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere, which attempted to reconcile certain forces and facts of his own life. This was a continuing theme in his work. As of September 2007, author Gore Vidal was completing the play, and Peter Bogdanovich was slated to direct its Broadway debut. The play received its world premiere in New York City in April 2012, directed by David Schweizer and starring Shirley Knight as Babe.

The rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Columbus, Mississippi, where Williams's grandfather Dakin was rector at the time of Williams's birth, was moved to another location in 1993 for preservation. It was newly renovated in 2010 for use by the City of Columbus as the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center.

Williams's literary legacy is represented by the literary agency headed by Georges Borchardt.

In 1985, French author-composer Michel Berger wrote a song dedicated to Tennessee Williams, " Quelque chose de Tennessee " (Something of Tennessee), for Johnny Hallyday. It became one of the singer's more famous songs.

Since 1986, the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival has been held annually in New Orleans, Louisiana, in commemoration of the playwright. The festival takes place at the end of March to coincide with Williams's birthday.

The Tennessee Williams Songbook is a one woman show written and directed by David Kaplan, a Williams scholar and curator of Provincetown 's Tennessee Williams Festival, and starring Tony Award nominated actress Alison Fraser. The show features songs taken from plays of Williams's canon, woven together with text to create a new narrative. The show premiered at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. The show was recorded on CD and distributed by Ghostlight Records.

In 2014 Williams was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields."

In 2015, The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans was founded by Co-Artistic Directors Nick Shackleford and Augustin J Correro. The New Orleans–based non-profit theatre company is the first year-round professional theatre company that focuses exclusively on the works of Williams.

"here used to be two streetcars in New Orleans. One was named Desire and the other was called Cemeteries. To get where you were going, you changed from the first to the second. In stories and in those plays, Tennessee validated with his genius our common ticket of transfer."—Biographer and critic Gore Vidal in the Introduction to Tennessee Williams: Collected Stories (1985)

Since 2016, St. Louis, Missouri has held an annual Tennessee Williams Festival, featuring a main production and related events such as literary discussions and new plays inspired by his work. In 2018 the festival produced A Streetcar Named Desire.

The U.S. Postal Service honored Williams on a stamp issued on October 13, 1995 as part of its literary arts series.

Williams is honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. He is also inducted into the Clarksdale Walk of Fame.

On October 17, 2019, the Mississippi Writers Trail installed a historical marker commemorating William's literary contributions during his namesake festival produced by the City of Clarksdale, Mississippi.
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