1. Suzan-Lori Parks was born on May 10,1963 and is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist.
17 Facts About Suzan-Lori Parks
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Suzan-Lori Parks was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
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Suzan-Lori Parks grew up with two siblings in a military family.
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Suzan-Lori Parks graduated high school from The John Carroll School in 1981, while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground.
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In high school, Suzan-Lori Parks was discouraged from studying literature by at least one teacher, but upon reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Suzan-Lori Parks found herself veering away from her interest in chemistry, gravitating towards writing.
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Suzan-Lori Parks attended Mount Holyoke College and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
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Suzan-Lori Parks 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.
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Suzan-Lori Parks then studied acting for a year at Drama Studio London.
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Suzan-Lori Parks was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein, who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles, and by her Mount Holyoke professor, Leah Blatt Glasser.
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Suzan-Lori Parks later worked with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions on screenplays for Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Great Debaters.
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Suzan-Lori Parks has received a number of grants including the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001.
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Suzan-Lori Parks is a winner of the 2017 Poets, Essayists and Novelists America Literary Awards in the category Master American Dramatist.
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Suzan-Lori Parks is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and believed he left a legacy for descendants of slaves.
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Suzan-Lori Parks got this job because he could be paid less than the white man who had the job before.
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Jacob Ming-Trent won the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play and Suzan-Lori Parks won the 2015 Obie Award for playwriting presented by the American Theater Wing.
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In 2001, Suzan-Lori Parks married blues musician Paul Oscher; they divorced in 2010.
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Suzan-Lori Parks noted in an interview that her name is spelled with a "Z" as the result of a misprint early in her career:.