Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: May 16, 1947 - Bob Edwards

 

 

Image from theconversationhub.com

From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -

Radio news journalist Robert (Bob) Edwards, son of Joseph R. and Loretta (Fuchs) Edwards, was born in Louisville on May 16, 1947. After graduating from St. Xavier High School in 1965 he entered the University of Louisville, where he received a B.S. in commerce in 1969. He began his career in news reporting before his graduation, working as the news and program director at WHEL-AM, in New Albany, Indiana, from 1968 until 1969. Following a brief stint in the army, 1969-71, Edwards became the news anchor at WTOP-AM, Washington, D.C., in 1972 and obtained an M.A. in communications from American University the same year. Later that year, Edwards left WTOP to become a correspondent and night editor for the Multimedia Broadcasting System, stationed in Washington. In 1974 he joined National Public Radio as an associate producer; later that year he became co- host of the network's " All Things Considered" program. In 1979, he became host of the news program " Morning Edition," a position he still held in 1992. Edwards has produced and anchored several radio documentaries, including one on Edward R. Murrow, in 1975; on Letcher County , Kentucky, in 1976; and on Appalachian writers in 1980. He has received numerous awards for his efforts in broadcasting, including the Unity Award In Media from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1983 and the Edward R. Murrow Award for public broadcasting in 1984. In 1985, the Louisville Forum granted him the Fleur-de- Lis award. Edwards married Sharon Kelly on May 14, 1979. They have three children, Brean, Susannah, and Nora. Selected Sources from UK Libraries: Edwards, Bob. A Voice in the Box : My Life in Radio. Lexington: U of Kentucky, 2011. Print. PN1991.4.E23 A3 2011, Young Library - 5th Floor Thurman, Tom., Robert H. Booth, Marilyn. Myers, Michael. Kelsay, Bob Edwards, and Kentucky Educational Television. Basketball in Kentucky Great Balls of Fire. Lexington, Ky.]: KET, 2002. AV-D7721. Young Media Library Edwards, Bob, and NetLibrary, Inc. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2004. Print. Turning Points (John Wiley & Sons). PN4874.M89 E38 2004, Young Library - 5th Floor

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: May 15, 1925 - Ralph Eugene Meatyard

From Smithsonian Magazine November 2011 -

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: The Man Behind the Masks

The "dedicated amateur" photographer had a strange way of getting his subjects to reveal themselves

 
Ralph Eugene Meatyard said that masks erased the differences between people. He photographed his family, shown here, in 1962. (The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco)

By David Zax 

Smithsonian Magazine
November 2011 

One day in 1958 or ’59, Ralph Eugene Meatyard walked into a Woolworths store in Lexington, Kentucky. An optician by trade, Meatyard was also a photographer—a “dedicated amateur,” he called himself—and he kept an eye out for props. He might drop by an antiques store to buy eerie dolls or emerge from a hobby shop with a jar of snakes or mice cured in formalin. In Woolworths, he came upon a set of masks whose features suggested a marriage of Picasso and a jack-o’-lantern.

“He immediately liked their properties,” recalls his son Christopher, who was with him at the time. Meatyard père bought a few dozen. “They were latex and had a very unique odor,” says Christopher, now 56. “In the summer they could be hot and humid.”

Over the next 13 years, Meatyard persuaded a procession of family and friends to don one of the Woolworths masks and pose in front of his camera. The resulting photographs became the best known of the pictures he left behind when he died of cancer in 1972, at age 46. That work, says the photographer Emmet Gowin, who befriended Meatyard in the 1970s, is “unlike anyone else’s in this world.”

“He picked the environment first,” Christopher says of his father’s method. “Then he’d look at the particular light in that moment in that place, and start composing scenes using the camera.” With the shot composed, he would then populate it, telling his subjects where to place themselves, which way to face, whether to move or stand still.

For the 1962 portrait on the preceding page, Meatyard chose an abandoned minor-league ballpark and arranged his wife and their three children in the bleachers. (Christopher is at left; his brother, Michael, is in the middle; his sister, Melissa, at the bottom; and their mother, Madelyn, is seated top right.) The title he gave the image—Romance (N.) From Ambrose Bierce #3—provides only the broadest hint of what he was up to: In his Devil’s Dictionary, Bierce had defined “romance” as “fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as they are.”

But still, why masks? Well, “the idea of a person, a photograph, say, of a young girl with a title ‘Rose Taylor’ or the title ‘Rose’ or no title at all becomes an entirely different thing,” Meatyard once said. “ ‘Rose Taylor’ is a specific person, whether you know her nor not. ‘Rose’ is more generalized and could be one of many Roses—many people. No title, it could be anybody.” And in the same way, a mask “serves as non-personalizing a person.”

And why would someone want to do that? In an essay on Meatyard’s work, the critic James Rhem quotes one of his sitters, Mary Browning Johnson: “He said he felt like everyone was connected, and when you use the mask, you take away the differences.”

Gowin, who posed for a Meatyard portrait, recalls thinking that wearing a mask would surely erase all sense of personhood. “But when I saw the pictures,” he says, “I realized that even though you have the mask, your body language completely gives you away. It’s as if you’re completely naked, completely revealed.”

Meatyard, whose surname is of English origin, was born in Normal, Illinois, in 1925. He served stateside in the Navy during World War II and briefly studied pre-dentistry before settling on a career as an optician. He plied that trade all his working life—9 to 5 on weekdays, 9 to noon on Saturdays—but photography became his ruling passion shortly after he purchased his first camera, in 1950, to photograph his newborn son, Michael. Four years later, Meatyard joined the Lexington Camera Club. Endlessly curious, he sought inspiration in philosophy, music and books—historical fiction, poetry, short stories and collections of Zen koans. Zen and jazz were enduring influences. “How many businessmen run Buddhist-style meditation groups over the lunch hour?” asks Gowin.

Despite his self-proclaimed status as an amateur, Meatyard soon became known in serious photography circles. In 1956, his work was exhibited beside that of Ansel Adams, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan and Edward Weston. Five years later, Beaumont Newhall, then director of the George Eastman House, listed him in Art in America as one of the “new talents” in American photography. In the late 1960s, he collaborated with the writer Wendell Berry on The Unforeseen Wilderness, a book about Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. In 1973, the New York Times called him a “backwoods oracle.”

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Meatyard, Ralph Eugene, James Baker Hall, and Guy. Davenport. Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Millerton, N. Y.: Aperture, 1974. Print.
TR654 .M38 1974, Fine Arts Library - Closed Stacks

Meatyard, Ralph Eugene, Eugenia. Parry, Elizabeth Siegel, Art Institute of Chicago, and M.H. De Young Memorial Museum. Ralph Eugene Meatyard : Dolls and Masks. Santa Fe : [Chicago]: Radius ; Art Institute of Chicago, 2011. Print.
TR647 .M393 2011, Fine Arts Library

Meatyard, Ralph Eugene, Barbara. Tannenbaum, and Akron Art Museum. Ralph Eugene Meatyard : An American Visionary. Akron] : New York: Akron Art Museum, Ohio ; Rizzoli, 1991. Print.
TR647 .M393 1991, Fine Arts Library - Oversize

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: May 15, 1911 - Mary Alice Hadley

image from hadleypottery.com

From the Kentucky Encyclopedia -
Mary Alice (Hale) Hadley, potter, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on May 15, 1911, to Frank R. and Hattie Alice Hale. She attended Indiana public schools and Indiana State University in Terre Haute, and graduated from Depauw College at Greencastle, Indiana, in 1933. At Depauw she met George Hadley, whom she married in 1930. In 1935, when the Hadleys were living in New York City, she took art classes at Columbia University. In 1939, after the Hadleys moved to Louisville, Mary Alice was given a boat, and unable to find dinnerware suitable for boating on the river, she decided to make her own. Friends in New York City and Chicago, impressed by Hadley's work, showed it to others, and orders began to arrive at her home for mugs, plates, and platters. The earthenware pieces were hand painted with cartoons of pigs, chickens, horses, farmers, or sheep, before being glazed, mostly in shades of blue and green. Hadley created a children's pottery series and also did custom designs.

Hadley's first commercial outlet was a gift shop, for which she filled special orders personally. In 1945 Hadley Pottery opened in an old factory on Story Avenue in Louisville. Mary Alice Hadley died on December 26, 1965, in Louisville and was cremated. George Hadley died on January 4, 1991. Hadley Pottery continues to operate.

See

Grady Clay, Jr., "Made in Louisville," and Marion Porter, "Charm from Clay," Louisville Courier-Journal Magazine, Oct. 8, 1950.

Source from UK Libraries: Payne, Warren. Clear as Mud : Early 20th Century Kentucky Art Pottery. Paris, KY: Cane Ridge Pub. House, 2010. Print. NK4025.K4 C54 2010, Fine Arts Library Other Sources: M.A. Hadley Historyhttp://hadleypottery.com/history.html Hadley Potteryhttp://hadley.retrovenue.com/

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: May 11, 1912 – Foster Brooks

Image from gravybread.wordpress.com




 




From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -
Foster Brooks, comedian and radio and television announcer, was born on May 11, 1912, in Louisville, one of eight children of Edna (Megowan) and Pleasant M. Brooks. At the age of thirteen he began his radio career at WHAS in Louisville, where his mother was a performer. During the 1937 Ohio River flood, Brooks and two other WHAS announcers maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil to provide news of the disaster. Brooks later broadcast for WAVE and WKLO radio in Louisville and worked at stations in St. Louis and in Rochester and Buffalo, New York. In the 1950s he moved into television and worked for WAVE-TV in Louisville. Brooks left local broadcasting for a career as a comedian and by the 1960s he was often seen in guest roles on television series. In the role of "Lovable Lush," he appeared frequently on stage in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. In the 1970s this character became a regular on television's " Dean Martin Show" and earned him an Emmy nomination. Brooks was a regular in the television series " New Bill Cosby Show" and " Mork and Mindy." Brooks returns to his native city annually as the sponsor of a celebrity charity golf tournament. The Baseball Hall of Fame recognized Brooks as the author of the poem " Riley on the Mound."

MARY MARGARET BELL, Entry Author

Selected Source from UK Libraries:

Franklin, Joe. Joe Franklin's Encyclopedia of Comedians. 1st ed. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1979. Print.
PN2285 .F7, Young Library - Reference

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: May 10, 1963 - Suzan-Lori Parks

Image from arts.mit.edu




From Wikipedia (Accessed May 10, 2016):
Suzan-Lori Parks (born May 10, 1963) is an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. Her 2001 play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002; Parks is the first African American woman to achieve this honor.[1]

Early life
Parks was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky on May 10, 1963; she grew up with two siblings in a military family. Parks enjoyed writing poems and songs and even created a newspaper with her brother, called the "Daily Daily".[2] In 1974 her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed in West Germany where she attended middle school and attended German high school.[2] The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign".[2][3] After returning to the United States Parks lived and attended school in several states such as Kentucky, Texas, California, North Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont.[2] Parks says her constant relocation could have had an impact on her writing.[4] She graduated high school at The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. [5] [6]

Academics
In high school, Parks was discouraged from studying literature due to a teacher criticizing her spelling. However, upon reading Virginia Woolf's To the Light House, Parks found herself veering away from her initial interest in chemistry, gravitating towards writing.[7] Parks attended and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature while a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She studied under James Baldwin, who encouraged her to become a playwright. James Baldwin describes Parks during this time as, "an utterly astounding and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time." [6] Suzan-Lori Parks continued studying a year in acting at Drama Studio London in order to better understand the stage.[8][9][10]

Career
Parks credits the impact of Mount Holyoke on her career later in life.[11] Since acting at the Drama Studio, Suzan-Lori Parks has received 11 awards, being the first female African-American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for her play Topdog/Underdog in 2002. She has also received a number of grants including the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, the same year as the production of her play "Topdog/Underdog".[6]

While she was an undergraduate, her Mount Holyoke English professor Mary McHenry introduced Parks to James Baldwin.[12] Parks was initially opposed to theater, thinking that it was "where a lot of people with too much attitude wore funny clothes and funny little costumes, and they talked with funny little voices even though they were from, like, New York or New Jersey. And I didn't respect that."[13] Parks began to take classes with Baldwin and, at his behest, began to write plays. [12] She was still out of touch with theater, the only plays she was familiar with were those of Shakespeare, only because she was a German/English major.[14] Parks also noted that she was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein, a 1971 Mount Holyoke graduate who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles.[11] Parks also credited another Mount Holyoke professor, Leah Blatt Glasser, with her success.[15]

Parks' 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).[16][17]

Parks is often noted for her unique voice in the way she experiments and explores with language and dialect, stating how she tries to capture emotion and expression through language: "The difference between 'k' and 'o.k.' is not just what one might call Black English versus standard English, for example...It's just getting more specific, letting the words hold the emotion. Instead of some parenthetical stage direction."[4]

View of Theater
Parks once asked a woman on the subway where could send her scripts because she believed they were "unconventional." Parks creates many roles and plays for people of her origin, while also writing for those not of her origin. She is one of the first in theater to fully exploit the power of spoken Black English, saying she is willing to "show her ass" without apologizing for it. One of her main points is to make the most of what you have, even if you do not have much at all. Parks believes in having faith in yourself and in your projects and sticking to the spirit of the play.[18]

Topdog/Underdog
One of her best-known works is titled ''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. Topdog/Underdog explains what that legacy is. It tells the story of two African American brothers: Lincoln and Booth. Lincoln works at a boardwalk arcade, dressing up like Abraham Lincoln and letting the tourists shoot him with plastic guns. He got this job because he could be paid less than the white man who had the job before. Parks does not judge Lincoln in this play, but rather enjoys bringing him into the other characters' lives and seeing how they are affected. She said, "Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a mythic figure. In days of Greek drama, they had Apollo and Medea and Oedipus- these larger than life figures that walked the earth and spoke- and they turned them into plays. Shakespeare had kings and queens that he fashioned into his stories. Lincoln, to me, is one of those." Parks also believes that Lincoln "created an opening with that hole in his head." She makes the case that everything we do has to pass through everything else, like the eye of a needle. She says we have all passed through the hole in Lincoln's head on our journey to whatever lies ahead. Like many of her other plays, Topdog/Underdog takes her characters on a quest to find out who they are and to examine the stories and experiences that have shaped their lives. More than anything, she believes that we have an important relationship with the past.[19]

365 Plays/365 Days
Parks decided that she wanted to give herself the task of writing three hundred and sixty five plays in three hundred and sixty five days, hence her play 365 Plays/365 Days. This decision was made shortly after one of her books, Getting Mother's Body, was published. She kept herself on schedule and succeeded. She wrote anywhere she had to; on the road, hotel rooms, and modes of transportation. Her end result has been produced by more than seven hundred theaters all around the world.[20]

WORKS

Playwright
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 (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 (2006)
Ray Charles Live! (2007)
Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 8 & 9) (2009)
The Book of Grace (2010)
Porgy and Bess (2011) (adaptation with Diedre L. Murray)
Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1,2&3) (2014)

Screenplay
Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
Girl 6 (1996)

Essays
Suzan-Lori Parks (May 2003). "Suzan-Lori Parks's Aha! Moment". O. Archived from the original on 2008-01-13. Retrieved 2008-12-25.
Suzan-Lori Parks (27 May 2001). "Commencement Speech to the Mount Holyoke College Class of 2001". Mount Holyoke College. Retrieved 2008-12-25.

Novels
Parks, Suzan-Lori (2003). Getting Mother's Body: A Novel (First ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6022-2.

Awards
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
2001 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama – Topdog/Underdog
2006 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from the Council for the Arts
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[21]

Nominations
2000 Pulitzer Prize Drama Finalist – In The Blood
2002 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play – Topdog/Underdog
2002 Tony Award for Best Play – Topdog/Underdog
2015 Pulitzer Prize Drama Finalist - "Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3"

Personal life
Parks is married to blues musician Paul Oscher.[22]

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.[23]

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

Notes
1. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography". biography.com. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
2. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography". Academy of Achievement A Museum of Living History. Academy of Achievement. November 11, 2013. Retrieved August 3, 2015.
3. Suzan-Lori Parks (Archived from Jan 2010)
4. Jiggetts, Shelby; Parks, Suzan-Lori (1996-01-01). "Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks". Callaloo 19 (2): 309–317.
5. "Connections" (PDF). John Carroll School. Spring 2007. p. 4.
6. "Biography Page for Suzan-Lori Parks". The History Makers. The History Makers. November 21, 2006. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
7. Jiggetts, Shelby; Parks, Suzan-Lori (1996-01-01). "Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks". Callaloo 19 (2): 309–317.
8. Als, Hilton (October 30, 2006). "The Show-Woman". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
9. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography". biography.com. biography.com. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
10. "Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Took Her Cue from Five College Professor James Baldwin". Mount Holyoke College. Archived from the original on July 13, 2010. Retrieved August 13, 2015.
11. "Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama". College Street Journal. April 12, 2002.
12. "Suzan-Lori Parks Interview". Academy of Achievement. June 22, 2007.
13. Jiggetts, Shelby; Parks, Suzan-Lori (1996-01-01). "Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks". Callaloo 19 (2): 309–317.
14. Parks, Suzan-Lori (1996-01-01). "Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks". Callaloo 19 (2): 309–317. |first1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help)
15. "In the News: Traditions and communications". College Street Journal. May 24, 1996. 
16. 'Debaters' makes its case
17. Harris, Dana and Brodesser, Claude (2004). "Back-to-back helming: Washington to take 2 gigs," Variety September 29, 2004. Retrieved December 16, 2007.
18. Als, Hilton (2006-10-30). "The Show-Woman". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
19. Shenk, Joshua Wolf (2002-04-07). "Theater; Beyond a Black-and-White Lincoln". The New Yrk Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
20. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography -- Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
21. Piepenburg, Erik (14 October 2015). "Suzan-Lori Parks Is Awarded the Gish Prize". New York Times. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
22. Suzan-Lori Parks and Paul Oscher
23. "A moment with Suzan-Lori Parks, playwright", The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 26, 2003.

References
Als, Hilton. "The Show-Woman: Suzan-Lori Parks's Idea for the Largest Theatre Collaboration Ever, The New Yorker magazine, October 30, 2006.
Baym, Nina (ed.) "Suzan-Lori Parks." In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th edition, Vol. E. New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 2003: 2606-2607.
Collins, Ken and Victor Wishna. "Suzan-Lori Parks." In In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights. New York: Umbrage Editions, 2006: 186-189.
NPR interviews. "Suzan-Lori Parks".
"In Dialogue: The Imperceptible Mutabilities of Susan-Lori Parks in 365 Plays And As Many Days Across The Whole Kingdom" interview by Barbara Cassidy, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/theater/theater-beyond-a-black-and-white-lincoln.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/30/the-show-woman

External links Suzan-Lori Parks at the Internet Broadway Database Suzan-Lori Parks at the Internet Movie Database Suzan-Lori Parks at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Suzan-Lori Parks - The Whiting Foundation Suzan-Lori Parks - Encyclopædia Britannica Voices from the Gaps Biography - University of Minnesota Women of Color Women of Words Biography - Rutgers University Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Visits MHC (March 2007)

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Topdog/underdog. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2002. Print.PS3566.A736 T66 2002, Fine Arts Library Books Stacks

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Getting Mother's Body : A Novel. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2003. Print.
PS3566.A736 G4 2003, Young Library Books - 5th Floor

Parks, Suzan-Lori. 365 Days/365 Plays. 1st ed. New York: Theatre Communications
Group, 2006. Print.
PS3566.A736 A15 2006, Young Library Books - 5th Floor

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: May 10, 1963 - Suzan-Lori Parks

From Wikipedia

(Accessed May 10, 2018)

Suzan-Lori Parks is an American playwright, screenwriter, musician and novelist. Her 2001 play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2002; Parks is the first African American woman to achieve this honor for drama.^[1]

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 even created a newspaper with her brother, called the "Daily Daily". ^[2] In 1974 her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed in West Germany where she attended middle school and attended German high school. ^[2] The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign". ^[2][3]  After returning to the United States Parks lived and attended school in several states such as Kentucky, Texas, California, North Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont.^[2]Parks says her constant relocation could have influenced her writing.^[4] She graduated high school at The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.^[5][6]

In high school, Parks was discouraged from studying literature due to a teacher criticising her spelling. However, upon reading Virginia Woolf's To the Light House, Parks found herself veering away from her initial interest in chemistry, gravitating towards writing.^[4] Parks attended and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature while a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She studied under James Baldwin, who encouraged her to become a playwright. James Baldwin describes Parks during this time as, "an utterly astounding and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time."^[6] Parks then studied acting for a year at Drama Studio London in order to better understand the stage.^[7][8][9]

Career

Parks credits the impact of Mount Holyoke on her career later in life.^[10] Since acting at the Drama Studio, Suzan-Lori Parks has received 11 awards, being the first female African-American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for her play Topdog/Underdog in 2002. She has also received a number of grants including the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, the same year as the production of her play "Topdog/Underdog". ^[6]

While she was an undergraduate, her Mount Holyoke English professor Mary McHenry introduced Parks to James Baldwin. ^[11] Parks was initially opposed to theater, thinking that it was "where a lot of people with too much attitude wore funny clothes and funny little costumes, and they talked with funny little voices even though they were from, like, New York or New Jersey. And I didn't respect that." ^[4] Parks began to take classes with Baldwin and, at his behest, began to write plays. ^[11] She was still out of touch with theater; the only plays she was familiar with were those of Shakespeare, only because she was a German/English major. ^[4] Parks also noted that she was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein, a 1971 Mount Holyoke graduate who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles. ^[10] Parks also credited another Mount Holyoke professor, Leah Blatt Glasser, with her success.^[12]

Parks' 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).^[13][14]

Parks is often noted for her unique voice in the way she experiments and explores with language and dialect, stating how she tries to capture emotion and expression through language: "The difference between 'k' and 'o.k.' is not just what one might call Black English versus standard English, for example.... It's just getting more specific, letting the words hold the emotion. Instead of some parenthetical stage direction."^[4]

She is a winner of the 2017 Poets, Essayists and Novelists (PEN) America Literary Awards in the category Master American Dramatist.^[15]

Topdog/Underdog

One of her best-known works is titled 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. Topdog/Underdog explains what that legacy is. It tells the story of two African-American brothers: Lincoln and Booth. Lincoln works at a boardwalk arcade, dressing up like Abraham Lincoln and letting the tourists shoot him with plastic guns. He got this job because he could be paid less than the white man who had the job before. Parks does not judge Lincoln in this play, but rather enjoys bringing him into the other characters' lives and seeing how they are affected. She said, "Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a mythic figure. In days of Greek drama, they had Apollo and Medea and Oedipus – these larger than life figures that walked the earth and spoke – and they turned them into plays. Shakespeare had kings and queens that he fashioned into his stories. Lincoln, to me, is one of those." Parks also believes that Lincoln "created an opening with that hole in his head." She makes the case that everything we do has to pass through everything else, like the eye of a needle. She says we have all passed through the hole in Lincoln's head on our journey to whatever lies ahead. Like many of her other plays, Topdog/Underdog takes her characters on a quest to find out who they are and to examine the stories and experiences that have shaped their lives. More than anything, she believes that we have an important relationship with the past.^[16]

365 Plays/365 Days

Parks decided that she wanted to give herself the task of writing 365 plays in 365 days, hence her play 365 Plays/365 Days. This decision was made shortly after one of her books, Getting Mother's Body, was published. She kept herself on schedule and succeeded. She wrote anywhere she had to: on the road, hotel rooms, and modes of transportation. The end result has been produced by more than 700 theaters around the world.^[17]

The plays were presented by 725 performing arts groups, taking turns until the entire cycle was performed. The performances started in 2006, and included venues such as the Denver Center Theatre Company, colleges in England and Australia and the Steel City Theatre Company in Pueblo, Colorado.^[18] Other venues were the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. The plays were presented at the Public Theater, New York City in November 2006, directed by Michael Greif.^[19]

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 on March 14, 2014 and closed on March 22, 2014 in a developmental production. Directed by Jo Bonney, the cast featured Sterling K. Brown (Hero), Peter Jay Fernandez (Oldest Old Man), Russell G. Jones (Leader/Runaway), and Jacob Ming-Trent (Runaway slave / Odyssey Dog / Fourth).^[20] The play returned to the Public Theater on October 14, 2014 and ran to December 7, 2014, with the same director and cast. Jacob Ming-Trent won the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play^[21] and Parks won the 2015 Obie Award for playwriting presented by the American Theater Wing.^[22]

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.^[23]

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."^[24]

Works

Plays

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 (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 (2006) Ray Charles Live! (2007) Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 8, and 9) (2009) The Book of Grace (2010) Porgy and Bess (2011) (adaptation with Diedre L. Murray) Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, and 3) (2014)

Screenplays

• Girl 6 (1996)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
• Native Son (2019)

Essays

• "Suzan-Lori Parks's Aha! Moment". O. May 2003. Archived from the original on 2008-01-13. Retrieved 2008-12-25.
• "Commencement Speech to the Mount Holyoke College Class of 2001". Mount Holyoke College. 27 May 2001. Retrieved 2008-12-25.
• “An Equation for Black People Onstage.” In The America Play and Other Works, 19–22. 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.
• “Possession.” In The America Play and Other Works, 3–5. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
• “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Theater 29.2 (1999): 26–33.

Novels

• Getting Mother's Body: A Novel. New York: Random House. 2003. ISBN 1-4000-6022-2.

Awards and nominations

Awards

• 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
• 2001 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
• 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama – 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"^[25]
• 2015 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize^[26]
• 2017 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Awards for Master American Dramatist
• 2018 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Drama^[27]

Nominations

• 2000 Pulitzer Prize Drama Finalist – In The Blood
• 2002 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play – Topdog/Underdog
• 2002 Tony Award for Best Play – Topdog/Underdog
• 2015 Lucille Lortel Awards Nomination Outstanding Play - 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

Personal life

In 2001, Parks married blues musician Paul Oscher.^[28] They divorced in 2011. She is currently engaged to Christian Konopka. They have a child now.

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."^[29]

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

Notes

1. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography". biography.com. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
2. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography". Academy of Achievement A Museum of Living History. Academy of Achievement. November 11, 2013. Retrieved August 3, 2015.
3. Suzan-Lori Parks (Archived from January 2010)
4.  Jiggetts, Shelby; Parks, Suzan-Lori (1996-01-01). "Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks". Callaloo. 19 (2): 309–317. JSTOR 3299177.
5. "Connections" (PDF). John Carroll School. Spring 2007. p. 4.
6. "Biography Page for Suzan-Lori Parks". The History Makers. November 21, 2006. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
7. Als, Hilton (October 30, 2006). "The Show-Woman". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
8. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography". biography.com. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
9. "Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Took Her Cue from Five College Professor James Baldwin". Mount Holyoke College. Archived from the original on July 13, 2010. Retrieved August 13, 2015.
10. "Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama". College Street Journal. April 12, 2002.
11. "Suzan-Lori Parks Interview". Academy of Achievement. June 22, 2007. Archived from the original on January 8, 2009.
12. "In the News: Traditions and communications". College Street Journal. May 24, 1996. Archived from the original on March 23, 2005.
13. 'Debaters' makes its case
14. Harris, Dana and Brodesser, Claude (2004). "Back-to-back helming: Washington to take 2 gigs", Variety, September 29, 2004. Retrieved December 16, 2007.
15. Hetrick, Adam. "Suzan-Lori Parks, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Thomas Bradshaw Win PEN America Literary Awards", Playbill, February 23, 2017.
16. Shenk, Joshua Wolf (2002-04-07). "Theater; Beyond a Black-and-White Lincoln". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
17. "Suzan-Lori Parks Biography -- Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
18. Moore, John. "365 Days … 365 Plays", The Denver Post, November 10, 2006, retrieved January 15, 2017.
19. Robertson, Campbell. "A Playwright's Cycle, With a New Work a Day for an Entire Year", The New York Times, November 10, 2006.
20. " Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 March", lortel.org, retrieved January 14, 2017.
21. " Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 October", lortel.org, retrieved January 14, 2017.
22. Obie Awards, 2015 Winners.
23. Hetrick, Adam. "Suzan-Lori Parks Father Comes Home from the Wars' Extends Again", Playbill, November 17, 2014.
24. "Suzan-Lori Parks", pulitzer.org, retrieved January 14, 2017.
25. "Kennedy Prize, 2015", columbia.edu, February 23, 2015, retrieved January 14, 2017.
26. Piepenburg, Erik (October 14, 2015). "Suzan-Lori Parks Is Awarded the Gish Prize". The New York Times. Retrieved October 14, 2015.
27. "Yale awards eight writers $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes". YaleNews. 2018-03-07. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
28. Suzan-Lori Parks and Paul Oscher
29. "A moment with Suzan-Lori Parks, playwright", The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 26, 2003.

References

• Als, Hilton. "The Show-Woman: Suzan-Lori Parks's Idea for the Largest Theatre Collaboration Ever, The New Yorker magazine, October 30, 2006.
• Als, Hilton, "The Show-Woman", New Y0rker, October 30, 2006.
• Baym, Nina (ed.) "Suzan-Lori Parks." In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th edition, Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2003: 2606–2607.
• Collins, Ken and Victor Wishna. "Suzan-Lori Parks." In In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights. New York: Umbrage Editions, 2006: 186–189.
• NPR interviews. "Suzan-Lori Parks".
• "In Dialogue: The Imperceptible Mutabilities of Susan-Lori Parks in 365 Plays And As Many Days Across The Whole Kingdom" interview by Barbara Cassidy, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2006.
• Geis, Deborah R. 2008. Suzan-Lori Parks. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Ghasemi, Mehdi. 2016. Quest/ion of Identities in African American Feminist Postmodern Drama: A Study of Selected Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks. Turku: Painosalama Oy.
• Ghasemi, Mehdi. 2014. “History Plays as/or Counterhistory Plays: A Study of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Major Plays.” Marang: Journal of Language and Literature, vol. 24, April/May: 123-136.
• Ghasemi, Mehdi. 2015. “Sleep, Death’s Twin Brother: A Quest for Postmodern Identities in The Death of the Last Black Man.” Orbis Litterarum, vol. 70, no. 2, 150-174.
• Ghasemi, Mehdi. 2015. “A Study of Quad Ps in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 46, no. 3, 258-281.
• Ghasemi, Mehdi. 2015. “Peace in Pieces: A Postmodern Study of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Fall, vol. 30, no. 1, 29-49.
• Ghasemi, Mehdi. 2016. “Wanted: Debt or Alive in Suzan-Lori Parks’s FA.” Journal of Black Studies, November, vol. 48, no. 8, 822-845.
• Ghasemi, Mehdi. 2016. “Quest/ion of Identities in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Postrevolutionary Drama.” European Journal of American Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, 1-13.
• Marshal, John. 2003. “A Moment with Suzan-Lori Parks, Playwright.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer (May 25). Accessed April 20, 2015. http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/books/article/A-momentwith-Suzan-Lori-Parks-playwright-1115418.php.
• Shenk, Joshua Wolf, "Theater; Beyond a Black-and-White Lincoln", New York Times, April 7, 2002.
• Wetmore, Jr., Kevin J. 2007. “It’s an Oberammergau Thing: An Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks.” In Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. and Alycia Smith-Howard, 124–140. London and New York: Routledge,

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Topdog/underdog. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2002. Print.PS3566.A736 T66 2002, Fine Arts Library Books Stacks

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Getting Mother's Body : A Novel. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2003. Print.

PS3566.A736 G4 2003, Young Library Books - 5th Floor

Parks, Suzan-Lori. 365 Days/365 Plays. 1st ed. New York: Theatre Communications

Group, 2006. Print.

PS3566.A736 A15 2006, Young Library Books - 5th Floor