Suzan-Lori Parks facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Suzan-Lori Parks
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Parks in 2006
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| Born | May 10, 1963 Fort Knox, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter |
| Education | Mount Holyoke College (BA) Drama Studio London |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2002) |
| Spouse |
Paul Oscher
(m. 2001; div. 2010)Christian Konopka (current) |
| Children | 1 |
Suzan-Lori Parks (born May 10, 1963) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. A playwright is someone who writes plays for the theater. A screenwriter writes scripts for movies and TV shows.
In 2002, her play Topdog/Underdog won the famous Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This made her the first African-American woman ever to win this award for a play. In 2023, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
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Early Life and Schooling
Parks was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Her father was an officer in the United States Army, so her family moved around a lot. As a child, she loved to write poems and songs. She even started a family newspaper with her brother.
For a while, her family lived in West Germany. Parks said this experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign." After high school, she went to Mount Holyoke College.
At first, Parks was interested in chemistry. But after reading the book To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, she fell in love with writing. One of her teachers was the famous writer James Baldwin. He saw her talent and encouraged her to write plays. She graduated in 1985 and later studied acting in London.
Career as a Writer
Suzan-Lori Parks has written many successful plays and movie scripts. She wrote the screenplay for the 1996 movie Girl 6, directed by Spike Lee. She also worked with Oprah Winfrey on the movies Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005) and The Great Debaters (2007).
Parks has won many awards for her work. Besides the Pulitzer Prize, she received a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2001. This is a special award given to very creative people. In 2018, she won the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award for her important contributions to American theater.
Topdog/Underdog
One of her most famous works is the play Topdog/Underdog. It tells the story of two African-American brothers named Lincoln and Booth. Their names are a reference to President Abraham Lincoln and the man who assassinated him.
In the play, the brother named Lincoln has a strange job. He works at an arcade where he dresses up as Abraham Lincoln. Tourists then get to shoot him with toy guns. The play explores the brothers' lives, their struggles, and their relationship with each other. Parks has said that she sees Abraham Lincoln as a mythic figure in American history, much like the gods and kings in ancient Greek plays or Shakespeare's stories.
365 Plays/365 Days
Parks once challenged herself to write a new play every single day for a whole year. This amazing project was called 365 Plays/365 Days.
The plays were performed all over the world. The project started in 2006 in New York City. Soon, theaters in places like Chicago, Los Angeles, and even England and Australia joined in. Over 700 different theater groups helped perform the entire cycle of 365 plays.
Father Comes Home From the Wars
This play is set during the American Civil War. It is presented in three parts and tells the story of a slave who must make a difficult choice. The play explores big ideas like freedom, identity, and power with both humor and seriousness.
Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The judges called it a "distinctive and lyrical epic."
The Red Letter Plays
Parks wrote two plays that were inspired by the classic novel The Scarlet Letter. These are known as The Red Letter Plays. Both plays are about a mother named Hester who is treated like an outcast by society.
- In the Blood (1999) is about a poor mother with five children who is let down by the people around her. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.
- ... A (2000) tells the story of a woman named Hester who is trying to free her son from prison.
In 2017, a theater in New York City performed both plays in the same season. This allowed audiences to see how the two stories connect.
Personal Life
In 2001, Parks married blues musician Paul Oscher. They later divorced. She is now married to Christian Konopka, and they have a child.
An interesting fact is that her first name is spelled with a "Z" because of a mistake. Early in her career, a flyer for one of her plays misspelled her name from "Susan" to "Suzan." She was upset, but the director told her to keep it. She did, and the name stuck.
Parks also teaches playwriting to college students at Tisch School of the Arts in New York City.
Works
Theatre
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Screenplays
- Girl 6 (1996)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
- Native Son (2019)
- The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)
Novels
- Getting Mother's Body (2003)
