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Suzan-Lori Parks

Playwright, screenwriter and novelist; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 2002

United States · b. 1963

American dramatist, the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for Topdog/Underdog. Born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, she moved frequently as a child because of her father’s army career, including four years in West Germany. She was encouraged toward the theatre by James Baldwin while a student at Mount Holyoke College.

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Question What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job?

Right. And let’s put Michelangelo in quotes, ’cause was he really the one who actually said that? But, anyway, the idea still holds. I feel that whatever I’m writing exists already. Maybe that’s because of a glitch in the space-time continuum and when I write I’m actually putting my living self behind the present moment in time. Like I’m following something through the woods. Eyes open. Ears open. Heart open. And I’m following a path that is sometimes behind me.

Recorded Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, The Paris Review, Issue 235, Winter 2020, 2020 source ↗

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