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Suzan-Lori Parks (born May 10th, 1963) is an American playwright and screenwriter. She started her career in the 1980's after graduating Summa Cum Laude in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Early Life
Parks was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky on May 10th, 1963 to her father Donald Roderick Parks and mother Francis Anmon McMillan Parks. Being raised in a military family, a year after Suzan-Lori was born her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed in West Germany where she attended middles school and "attended German high school instead of the English-speaking school for military children. The experience, in addition to teaching her the fundamentals of language, showed Parks what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign." After returning to the United States, Parks lived and attended school for short periods of time in six states, including Vermont. She graduated high school at The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

Academics
As a student earning her Undergraduate degree, she later 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) studying under James Baldwin who encouraged her image of becoming a playwright. Suzan-Lori Parks continued studying a year in London acting at the University of Sheffield Drama Studio.

Career
Since completing 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.

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.

The New York Times appraises "Girlhood" in Anthony Oliver Scott's review by maintaining the movie's focus on a young woman in an absent society where she is fierce, independent, gentle and intelligent in order to survive what comes ahead. A. O. Scott focuses on the conflict between the conscious Marieme developing towards the fearless Vic and how she combats the stereotypes of what a young woman in her situation is expected to become by transforming her experiences into a future she now controls.