Suzan-Lori Parks

Early life and education

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." Parks was raised Catholic and attended high school in West Germany, where her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed. The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign". After returning to the U.S., her family relocated frequently and Parks went to school in Kentucky, Texas, California, North Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont.

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. Parks attended Mount Holyoke College and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She graduated in 1985 with a B.A. degree 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. Parks, at his behest, began to write plays. Baldwin considered her talent as amazing. Parks then studied acting for a year at Drama Studio London.

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.

Career

Parks has written three screenplays and numerous stage plays. Her first screenplay was for Spike Lee's 1996 film Girl 6. She later worked with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions on screenplays for Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005) and The Great Debaters (2007).

Parks became the first female African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which was awarded in 2002 for her play Topdog/Underdog. She has also received a number of grants including the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001. She is a winner of the 2017 Poets, Essayists and Novelists (PEN) America Literary Awards in the category Master American Dramatist. She received the 2018 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. This biennial award is given to "established playwrights whose body of work has made significant contributions to the American theatre."

''Betting on the Dust Commander''

Although Betting on the Dust Commander was not the first play Parks wrote, it was the first of her plays to be produced. Her first play The Sinner's Place, which she wrote for her senior project at Mount Holyoke, was rejected for production by her college's drama department as they considered it too experimental since she wanted to have dirt on the stage during the performance. When her second play, Betting on the Dust Commander, first premiered, it ran for three nights in a bar in Manhattan's Lower East Side called Gas Station. It is a short, one-act play set in Kentucky, centering around the lives of a couple, Mare and Lucius, who have been married for 110 years. The play's title comes from the horse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1970, Dust Commander. As the play goes on, we discover that Dust Commander's Derby is responsible for bringing Mare and Lucius together, and through the couple's discussion of him they think back over their many years of memories together. Poet Philip Kolin argues that Parks's incorporation of non-linear time and a repetitive style is reminiscent of African rituals and the way that their retelling of stories often incorporate the past in a literal manner.

''Topdog/Underdog''

One of her best-known works is Topdog/Underdog. This play marked a departure from the heightened language she usually wrote. Parks is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and believed he left a legacy for descendants of slaves.

365 Plays/365 Days

After her book Getting Mother's Body was published, Parks gave herself the task of writing 365 plays in 365 days, ultimately produced as 365 Plays/365 Days.

The plays were presented by 725 performing arts groups, taking turns until the entire cycle was performed. Other venues were the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles.

''Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3''

Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theater in a developmental production in March 2014 and a full production that fall. Directed by Jo Bonney, the cast featured Sterling K. Brown, Louis Cancelmi, Peter Jay Fernandez, Russell G. Jones, and Jacob Ming-Trent. Jacob Ming-Trent won the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play and Parks won the 2015 Obie Award for playwriting presented by the American Theater Wing. The play, which takes place during the American Civil War, is presented in three parts: Part 1, A Measure of a Man; Part 2, The Battle in the Wilderness; and Part 3, The Union of My Confederate Parts. From September 15 to October 22, 2016, the play had its London premiere at the Royal Court in a transfer of the Public Theatre production directed by Jo Bonney. The cast featured Steve Toussaint, Nadine Marshall, Leo Wringer, Sibusiso Mamba, Tom Bateman, and Jimmy Akingbola.

The play was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer committee wrote: "A distinctive and lyrical epic about a slave during the Civil War that deftly takes on questions of identity, power and freedom with a blend of humor and dignity."

The Red Letter Plays

The Red Letter Plays refers to Fucking A and In the Blood, two plays incorporating themes from The Scarlet Letter. The first play, In the Blood, premiered in 1999 and follows the story of Hester, a penniless mother of five who is condemned by the men who once loved her. In the Blood was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Fucking A premiered in 2000 and tells the story of Hester, an "abortionist" trying to free her son from prison.

In 2017, Signature Theatre Company produced these two plays in the same season.

''Sally & Tom''

In October 2022, Sally & Tom, a play about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, began performances at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

''Plays for the Plague Year''

Plays for the Plague Year, an anthology of plays and songs, described by The New York Times as "Parks's diaristic musings on the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and a coincident string of deaths, including those of Black Americans killed by police officers", was scheduled for a November 2022 premiere at Joe's Pub, with Parks onstage singing and starring.

''The Harder They Come''

The Harder They Come, Parks's musical adaptation of the 1972 Jamaican reggae film was staged at the Public Theater in 2023.

Works

Theatre

• The Sinner's Place (1984)
• Betting on the Dust Commander (1987)
• Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1989)
• The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World A.K.A. The Negro Book Of The Dead (1989–1992)
• Pickling (1990) (radio play)
• Third Kingdom (1990) (radio play)
• Locomotive (1991) (radio play)
• Devotees in the Garden of Love (1992)
• The America Play (1994)
• Venus (1996)
• In The Blood (1999)
• Fucking A (2000)
• Topdog/Underdog (2001)
• 365 Days/365 Plays (2002–2003)
• Unchain My Heart (The Ray Charles Musical) (2007)
• The Book of Grace (2010)
• Porgy and Bess (2011) (Book Adaptation)
• Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, and 3) (2014)
• White Noise (2019) (winner, 2019 Obie Award, Playwriting)
• Sally & Tom (2022)
• The Harder They Come (2023)

Screenplays

• Girl 6 (1996)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
• Native Son (2019)
• The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

Essays

• "Possession." In The America Play and Other Works, 3–5. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
• "From the Elements of Style". In The America Play and Other Works, 6–18. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
• "An Equation for Black People Onstage". In The America Play and Other Works, 19–22. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
• "Tradition and the Individual Talent". Theater 29.2 (1999): 26–33.

Novels

Recognition

• 1990: Obie Award Best New American Play – Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom
• 1992: Whiting Award
• 1995: Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Award
• 1996: Obie Award for Playwriting – Venus
• 2000: Guggenheim Fellowship Playwriting
• 2000: Pulitzer Prize Drama finalist – In The Blood
• 2001: MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
• 2002: Pulitzer Prize for Drama – Topdog/Underdog
• 2002: Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play nomination – Topdog/Underdog
• 2002: Tony Award for Best Play nomination – Topdog/Underdog
• 2006: Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT)
• 2007: Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award
• 2008: NAACP Theatre Award - Ray Charles Live! A New Musical
• 2015: Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History - "Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3"
• 2015: Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
• 2015: Lucille Lortel Outstanding Play Award nomination - Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3
• 2015: Pulitzer Prize Drama finalist - Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3
• 2017: PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Awards for Master American Dramatist
• 2018: Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Drama
• 2019: Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play — White Noise
• 2023: Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play -Topdog/Underdog
• 2024: Royal Society of Literature International Writer

Personal life

In 2001, Parks married blues musician Paul Oscher; they divorced in 2010. By 2017, she married Christian Konopka, with whom she has a child.

Parks noted in an interview that her name is spelled with a "Z" as the result of a misprint early in her career:

:When I was doing one of my first plays in the East Village, we had fliers printed up and they spelled my name wrong. I was devastated. But the director said, 'Just keep it, honey, and it will be fine.' And it was.

She teaches playwriting at Tisch School of the Arts in the Rita & Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing.

In 2011, Parks was the Master Writer Chair of The Public Theater, where she debuted a performance piece called Watch Me Work, in which she worked on her newest writing project in the theater's lobby, as part of the 2011 Under the Radar Festival. She was the 2013 Waldman Chair Visiting Artist at Emerson College, where she held another performance of Watch Me Work in the Randall Lobby of Emerson's Paramount Center.

Notes

References

References

1. "Suzan-Lori Parks".
2. Jackson, Angelique. “Genius: Aretha Franklin Showrunner Suzan-Lori Parks on Rewriting Genius,” Variety, March 15, 2021, accessed September 8, 2025, https://variety.com/2021/tv/features/genius-aretha-franklin-suzan-lori-parks-showrunner-nat-geo-cynthia-erivo-1203504706/
3. Television Academy. 2025. “Genius: Aretha.” Television Academy. Accessed September 8, 2025.https://www.televisionacademy.com/shows/genius-aretha
4. (April 13, 2023). "Time 100".
5. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography and Interview". [[American Academy of Achievement]].
6. (2002). "Profile 9: 'Tickling the Balls of God': Suzan-Lori Parks and her Many Creative Acts". Democratic Vistas Profiles.
7. [https://web.archive.org/web/20100115040630/http://spinner.cofc.edu/temples/parks.html?referrer=webcluster& Suzan-Lori Parks (Archived from January 2010)]
8. (1996). "An Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks". Callaloo.
9. (June 22, 2007). "Suzan-Lori Parks Interview". Academy of Achievement.
10. (November 21, 2006). "Biography Page for Suzan-Lori Parks".
11. Als, Hilton. (October 30, 2006). "The Show-Woman".
12. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography".
13. "Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Took Her Cue from Five College Professor James Baldwin". Mount Holyoke College.
14. (April 12, 2002). "Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama". College Street Journal.
15. (May 24, 1996). "In the News: Traditions and communications". College Street Journal.
16. Williams, Monte. (April 17, 1996). "At Lunch With: Suzan-Lori Parks; From A Planet Closer To the Sun". [[The New York Times]].
17. Lindsey, Craig D.. (December 25, 2007). "'Debaters' makes its case". [[The News & Observer]].
18. (September 29, 2004). "Back-to-back helming: Washington to take 2 gigs".
19. "Frost? Williams? No, Gwendolyn Brooks".
20. Hetrick, Adam. [http://www.playbill.com/article/suzan-lori-parks-tarell-alvin-mccrane-y-and-thomas-bradshaw-win-pen-awards# "Suzan-Lori Parks, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Thomas Bradshaw Win PEN America Literary Awards"], ''Playbill'', February 23, 2017.
21. Hetrick, Adam. [http://www.playbill.com/article/suzan-lori-parks-named-2018-steinberg-distinguished-playwright-award-winner# "Suzan-Lori Parks Named 2018 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award Winner"], ''Playbill'', October 3, 2018.
22. Garrett, Shawn Marie. (2000-10-01). "The Possession of Suzan-Lori Parks". Theatre Communications Group.
23. Als, Hilton. (2006-10-30). "The Show-Woman".
24. (May 2009). "Cultural memory and circular time in Suzan-Lori Parks's betting on the dust commander". Notes on Contemporary Literature.
25. (2013). "The America Play and Other Works". Theatre Communications Group.
26. Shenk, Joshua Wolf. (2002-04-07). "Theater; Beyond a Black-and-White Lincoln". The New York Times.
27. Robertson, Campbell. (2006-11-10). "A Playwright's Cycle, With a New Work a Day for an Entire Year". The New York Times.
28. The performances started in 2006 at [[The Public Theater]] in New York City, and included venues such as the Denver Center Theatre Company, colleges in England and Australia and the Steel City Theatre Company in [[Pueblo, Colorado]].Moore, John. [https://www.denverpost.com/2006/11/10/365-days-365-plays/ "365 Days … 365 Plays"], ''The Denver Post'', November 10, 2006, retrieved January 15, 2017.
29. [http://www.lortel.org/Archives/Production/5805 "''Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3'' March"], lortel.org. Retrieved January 14, 2017.
30. "Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)".
31. Obie Awards, [http://www.obieawards.com/2015/05/2015-obie-award-winners-announced/ 2015 Winners] obieawards.com
32. Hetrick, Adam. [http://www.playbill.com/article/suzan-lori-parks-father-comes-home-from-the-wars-extends-again-com-335607# "Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home from the Wars' Extends Again"], ''Playbill'', November 17, 2014.
33. [https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/father-comes-home-from-the-wars/"] royalcourttheatre.com, retrieved October 25, 2018
34. [http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/suzan-lori-parks-0 "Suzan-Lori Parks"] pulitzer.org, retrieved January 14, 2017
35. Windman, Matt. (2017-09-21). "Suzan-Lori Parks' 'Red Letter Plays' offer powerful, rewarding theater".
36. "Fucking A".
37. Paulson, Michael. (2022-10-05). "Suzan-Lori Parks Is on Broadway, Off Broadway and Everywhere Else". The New York Times.
38. (2023). "PLAYS FOR THE PLAGUE YEAR".
39. [http://iobdb.com/Archives/Production/6554 ''White Noise''] lortel.org, retrieved May 13, 2019
40. "The Harder They Come".
41. "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". [[American Academy of Achievement]].
42. [https://kennedyprize.columbia.edu/archives/173 "Kennedy Prize, 2015"], columbia.edu, February 23, 2015, retrieved January 14, 2017
43. (October 14, 2015). "Suzan-Lori Parks Is Awarded the Gish Prize". The New York Times.
44. (2018-03-07). "Yale awards eight writers $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes". YaleNews.
45. Staff. [http://www.playbill.com/article/hadestown-leads-the-outer-critics-circle-awards-with-6-wins# " 'Hadestown' Leads the Outer Critics Circle Awards With 6 Wins"], ''Playbill'', May 13, 2019.
46. (10 December 2024). "Royal Society of Literature International Writers 2024".
47. (2006-10-17). "Suzan-Lori Parks and Paul Oscher".
48. "Giving History a New Voice Keeps It Alive".
49. [http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/books/article/A-moment-with-Suzan-Lori-Parks-playwright-1115418.php "A moment with Suzan-Lori Parks, playwright"], ''[[The Seattle Post-Intelligencer]]'', May 26, 2003.
50. "Suzan-Lori Parks' Watch Me Work and Lecture at Emerson College".
51. (March 28, 2013). "Suzan-Lori Parks is Emerson's Waldman Chair".