Suzan-Lori Parks
Suzan-Lori Parks (born May 10, 1963) is an American playwright, screenwriter, musician and novelist. Her play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002; Parks was the first African-American woman to receive the award for drama.[1] She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.[2]
Suzan-Lori Parks
Early life and education[edit]
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."[3] Parks was raised Catholic and attended high school in West Germany, where her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed.[3][4] The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign".[3][5] After returning to the U.S., Parks's family relocated frequently and she attended school in Kentucky, Texas, California, North Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont.[3] She graduated high school from The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground.[6][7]
In high school, Parks was discouraged from studying literature by at least one teacher, but upon reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Parks found herself veering away from her interest in chemistry, gravitating towards writing.[8] 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 it was elitist and cliquey.[8] Parks, at his behest, began to write plays.[9] Baldwin considered her talent as amazing.[7] Parks then studied acting for a year at Drama Studio London.[10][11][12]
Parks was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles and[13] her Mount Holyoke professor, Leah Blatt Glasser.[14]