Born in Lebanon, Missouri, he was reared by his mother in the Ozarks, where he attended high school, and then in the Midwest until, as a teenager, he went to southern California to be with his long-divorced father. Wilson's dramatic career began at Caffe Cino, a small off-off-Brodway coffeehouse in Greenwich Village.

His works include Balm in Gilead, Fifth of July (which was made into a television movie for Showtime and PBS), Hot Baltimore, Burn This, The Redwood Curtain, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Talley's Folly, and the Obie Award-winning Sympathetic Magic.