21 Facts About Suzan-Lori Parks

1.

Suzan-Lori Parks was born on May 10,1963 and is an American playwright, screenwriter, musician and novelist.

2.

Suzan-Lori Parks was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.

3.

Suzan-Lori Parks grew up with two siblings in a military family.

4.

Suzan-Lori Parks graduated high school from The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground.

5.

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.

6.

Suzan-Lori Parks attended Mount Holyoke College and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

7.

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.

8.

Suzan-Lori Parks then studied acting for a year at Drama Studio London.

9.

Suzan-Lori Parks was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles and her Mount Holyoke professor, Leah Blatt Glasser.

10.

Suzan-Lori Parks later worked with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions on screenplays for Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Great Debaters.

11.

Suzan-Lori Parks has received a number of grants including the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001.

12.

Suzan-Lori Parks is a winner of the 2017 Poets, Essayists and Novelists America Literary Awards in the category Master American Dramatist.

13.

Suzan-Lori Parks complicates the audience's view of history, relationships, and the past; some argue that Suzan-Lori Parks's incorporation of these elements and the repetitive style of the text is reminiscent of African rituals and the way that their retelling of stories often incorporate the past in a literal manner.

14.

Suzan-Lori Parks is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and believed he left a legacy for descendants of slaves.

15.

Suzan-Lori Parks got this job because he could be paid less than the white man who had the job before.

16.

Suzan-Lori Parks says we have all passed through the hole in Lincoln's head on our journey to whatever lies ahead.

17.

Suzan-Lori Parks wrote anywhere she had to: on the road, hotel rooms, and modes of transportation.

18.

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.

19.

Suzan-Lori Parks has a reputation in the town as a "slut" on her, which is affecting her chance at making a better life for her kids.

20.

In 2001, Suzan-Lori Parks married blues musician Paul Oscher; they divorced in 2010.

21.

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:.