Suzan-Lori Parks

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Suzan-Lori Parks (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.

Contents

1 Background
2 Career

2.1 Early career
2.2 Pulitzer Prize
2.3 Additional plays
2.4 Screenplays
2.5 Novels

3 Works

3.1 Plays
3.2 Collections
3.3 Plays for radio
3.4 Screenplays/teleplays
3.5 Books
3.6 Essays and speeches

4 Awards
5 References
6 External links

Background

Parks was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky and went to high school in West Germany. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke College in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature. While a student at Mount Holyoke, Parks took a writing class with Five Colleges faculty member James Baldwin. At his behest, she began to write plays [link].

Career

Early career

According to an article in American Theatre:

"Baldwin's suggestion inspired her to complete her first play, The Sinners' Place, during her senior year [at Mount Holyoke], and a small-college territorial battle ensued. The play earned Parks honors in her English major even as it was rejected for production by the theatre department on the grounds that "You can't put dirt onstage! That's not a play!" [link].

Parks, however, would later credit Mount Holyoke:

"Parks said she was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein '71, who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles. [Parks stated], 'Mount Holyoke women rule, baby —just knowing someone else is out there doing something good and cool and gets some recognition for it. I joke about it. There's something in the water.' " [link]

Parks also credits her Mount Holyoke English "professors Mary McHenry and Leah Glasser with her success" [link].

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.

Additional plays

Other plays include 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).

Screenplays

Parks wrote her first screenplay for Girl 6, a 1996 film directed by Spike Lee (which he allegedly proposed to Parks with the question "Can you write about phone sex?"). She later wrote the teleplay for the 2005 film Their Eyes Were Watching God based upon the novel by Zora Neale Hurston. It was produced by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, the company which is currently producing (with Miramax), The Great Debaters, a forthcoming 2006 film directed by Denzel Washington and with a screenplay by Parks and Robert Eisele.

Novels

In addition, Parks is the author of the novel Getting Mother's Body.

Works

Plays

Topdog/Underdog (2001)
Fucking A (2000)
In The Blood (1999)
Venus (1996)
The America Play (1994)
Devotees in the Garden of Love (1992)
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990)
Betting on the Dust Commander (1990)
Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1989)
The Sinner's Place (1984)

Collections

Red Letter Plays (Fucking A and In The Blood), 2000
The American 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 (forthcoming, 2006)
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:

2002 Pulitzer Prize Drama for Topdog/Underdog
2001 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
2000 Guggenheim Fellowship Playwriting
1995 - 1996 Obie Award Playwriting: Venus
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 Blood

References

Baym, Nina (ed.) "Suzan-Lori Parks." In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th edition, Vol. E. New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 2003: 2606-2607 [link].

External links

[Voices from the Gaps Biography]
[Biography]
[Literary Encyclopedia] (entry in-progress)
[A moment with ... Suzan-Lori Parks, playwright]
[NPR: The Hills are Alive for Suzan-Lori Parks]
[Suzan-Lori Parks] at the [Internet Broadway Database]

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