Everything about Suzan-lori Parks totally explained
Suzan-Lori Parks (b. 1964) is an award-winning
American playwright and
screenwriter. She was a recipient of the
MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and received the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002. She is married to blues musician
Paul Oscher.
Background
Parks was born in
Fort Knox, Kentucky into a military family. She spent part of her childhood in
Germany and "attended German high school instead of the English speaking school for military children. The experience, in addition to teaching her the fundamentals of language, showed Parks what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign."
She eventually returned to the United States and graduated from
The John Carroll School in 1981. She later attended and graduated from
Mount Holyoke College in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa).
Parks noted in an interview that her name is spelled with a "Z" as the result of a misprint early in her career:
» When I was doing one of my first plays in the East Village, we'd fliers printed up and they spelled my name wrong. I was devastated. But the director said, 'Just keep it, honey, and it'll be fine.' And it was.
Influences
Parks would credit the impact of Mount Holyoke on her career later in life. While she was an undergraduate, her Mount Holyoke English professor
Mary McHenry introduced Parks to
Five Colleges faculty member
James Baldwin. Parks began to take classes with Baldwin and, at his behest, began to write plays.. Finally, in addition to McHenry, Parks also credited another Mount Holyoke professor,
Leah Blatt Glasser, with her success.
Career
Screenwriter
As a screenwriter, Parks has worked with important figures in the American film industry. Her first screenplay was for
Spike Lee's 1996 film,
Girl 6. She later worked in conjunction with
Oprah Winfrey's
Harpo Productions on screenplays for
Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005) and the 2007 film,
The Great Debaters (with Robert Eisele).
Playwright
Her plays include
Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom,
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World,
The America Play (the opening scene of which inspired
Topdog/Underdog),
Venus (about
Saartjie Baartman),
In The Blood and
Fucking A (which are both a retelling of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's
1850 novel
The Scarlet Letter).
From November 2002 to November 2003, Parks wrote a short play each day for a year. The result of this process is the "365 Days/365 Plays" series (featuring premieres of various of the 365 plays around the United States in 2006 and 2007). According to an article in the
New York Times, "subject matter for the plays, most only a few pages long, ranges from deities to soldiers to what Ms. Parks saw out of her plane window."
Pulitzer Prize
Her 2001 play,
Topdog/Underdog (a play about family identity, fraternal interdependence, and the struggles of everyday
African American life), won the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002.
Novelist
Parks is the author of the novel
Getting Mother's Body.
Other
Suzan-Lori Parks appeared on the
cover of LA STAGE
in November 2006 (photograph by
Eric Schwabel).
Works
Plays
Collections
Red Letter Plays (Fucking A and In The Blood), 2000
The America Play and Other Works (The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, The America Play, Betting on the Dust Commander, Pickling , and Devotees in the Garden of Love), 1994
Plays for radio
Locomotive (1991)
Third Kingdom (1990)
Pickling (1990)
Screenplays/teleplays
The Great Debaters (2007)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
Girl 6 (1996)
Books
(2003)
Essays and speeches
Suzan-Lori Parks's Aha! Moment - oprah.com
Suzan-Lori Parks Commencement Speech to the Mount Holyoke College Class of 2001 Held on May 27, 2001
Awards
Winner:
2006 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from the Council for the Arts at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
2002 Pulitzer Prize Drama for Topdog/Underdog
2001 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
2000 Guggenheim Fellowship Playwriting
1995 - 1996 Obie Award Playwriting: Venus
1995 Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Award.
1992 Whiting Writers' Award
1989 - 1990 Obie Award Best New American Play: Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom
Nominations:
2000 Pulitzer Prize Drama for In The BloodFurther Information
Get more info on 'Suzan-lori Parks'.
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