Suzan-Lori Parks biography

Profile

Suzan-Lori Parks is an African American playwright and screenwriter attended Mount Holyoke College, where James Baldwin, who taught writing there, encouraged her to try playwriting. She received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001. Her play Topdog/Underdog, a play about family identity and the struggles of everyday African American life, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002.