Parks, Suzan-Lori, 1963-
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Parks, Suzan-Lori, 1963-
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Surname :
Parks
Forename :
Suzan-Lori
Date :
1963-
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Parks, Suzan-Lori.
Name Components
Parks, Suzan-Lori.
Name Components
Parks, Susan-Lori., 1963-
Name Components
Surname :
Parks
Forename :
Susan-Lori.
Date :
1963-
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Biographical History
Suzan-Lori Parks (born May 10, 1963) is an American playwright, screenwriter, musician and novelist. Her 2001 play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002; Parks is the first African American woman to achieve this honor for drama.
Parks was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky. She grew up with two siblings in a military family. Parks enjoyed writing poems and songs and created a newspaper with her brother, called the "Daily Daily". Parks attended high school in West Germany, where her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed. The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign". After returning to the U.S., Parks's family relocated frequently and she attended school in Kentucky, Texas, California, North Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont. She graduated high school from The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground. In high school, Parks was discouraged from studying literature by at least one teacher, but upon reading Virginia Woolf's To the Light House, Parks found herself veering away from her interest in chemistry, gravitating towards writing. Parks attended Mount Holyoke College and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She graduated in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature. She studied under James Baldwin, who encouraged her to become a playwright; Parks was initially resistant to writing for theater, believing that it was "where a lot of people with too much attitude wore funny clothes and funny little costumes, and they talked with funny little voices even though they were from, like, New York or New Jersey. And I didn't respect that." Parks began to take classes with Baldwin and, at his behest, began to write plays. Baldwin later described Parks as, "an utterly astounding and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time." Parks then studied acting for a year at Drama Studio London.
Parks also noted that she was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein, a 1971 Mount Holyoke graduate who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles. Parks also credited another Mount Holyoke professor, Leah Blatt Glasser, with her success.
Parks has written three screenplays and numerous stage-plays. Her first screenplay was for Spike Lee's 1996 film Girl 6. She later worked with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions on screenplays for Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005) and The Great Debaters (2007).
Parks became the first female African-American to receive the Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded in 2002 for her play Topdog/Underdog. She has also received a number of grants including the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001. She is a winner of the 2017 Poets, Essayists and Novelists (PEN) America Literary Awards in the category Master American Dramatist. She received the 2018 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.
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Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks was born on May 10, 1963, in Fort Knox, Kentucky, to Francis McMillian Parks and Donald Parks, a colonel in the United States Army. As the child of a military officer, Parks spent some of her youth in German schools while her father was stationed in Europe. She attended college at Mount Holyoke College and studied fiction writing with James Baldwin, who recommended that she focus on writing for the theater. Parks began studying such playwrights as Ntozake Shange and Adrienne Kennedy, and she won honors for her experimental workThe Sinner's Place. Several of her early plays often addressed issues of race.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke College with her B.A. degree in English and German literature in 1985, Parks moved to London, where she began her career as a playwright. In 1987, her scriptBetting on the Dust Commanderwas produced in New York, and two years later, her playImperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdomwas awarded an Obie Award for the best Off-Broadway play of 1989. In 1990, she also publishedThe Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole World. Parks' script forThe American Playwas produced in 1994; it starred an Abraham Lincoln-obsessed character who works in a carnival dressed in whiteface.
In 2001, Parks' playTopdog/Underdogwas produced to critical acclaim. It followed the story of two brothers and their growing tension, and starred Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle (who would be replaced by Mos Def when the play hit Broadway). Parks was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for drama, the first African American woman to do so. The following year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded her a MacArthur Fellowship of $500,000, known as the "genius grant." During 2003, Parks published her first novel,Getting Mother's Body, an experimental retelling of Faulkner'sAs I Lay Dying. Parks also wrote screenplays for 1990'sAnemone Meand 1996'sGirl 6, directed by Spike Lee, as well as the radio plays "Pickling," "Third Kingdom" and "Locomotive".
Parks and her husband, blues musician Paul Oscher, live in Venice Beach, California. She works as a director at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
Suzan-Lori Parks was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on November 21, 2006.
External Related CPF
https://viaf.org/viaf/218656
https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n94064278
https://id.loc.gov/authorities/n94064278
https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q511432
https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/A2006.148
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Languages Used
eng
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Subjects
Abortion
Abortion services
African American families
Book clubs (Discussion groups)
Conduct of life
Group reading
Poor families
Social conflict
Treasure troves
Young women
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Americans
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Playwright
Playwrights
Screenwriters
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New York (N.Y.)
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Texas
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Fort Knox (Ky.)
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<conventionDeclaration><citation>VIAF</citation></conventionDeclaration>