A Million Suggestions with Suzan-Lori Parks

Suzan Lori-Parks’ Father Comes Home from the Wars, a rendition of the Odyssey set in the Civil War that draws on Greek tragedy while dealing with issues of slavery, was read by students this past fall, in its first appearance on the fall Lit Hum syllabus. Join this award-winning playwright at Columbia in a fun-filled, inspiring “lecture” in which she will talk about the origins of her own writing career and offer ideas to encourage the creative genius in each audience member. After a 45-minute talk, Parks will take questions from the audience.

Event sponsors are the Columbia College Center for the Core Curriculum and The Humanities War and Peace Initiative, through the Division of Humanities in the Arts and Sciences.

About Suzan-Lori Parks:

Named a Time Magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next Wave,” Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most acclaimed playwrights in American drama today. She is the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient, and in 2015 was awarded the prestigious Gish Prize for Excellence in the Arts. Other grants and awards include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts. She is also a recipient of a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts, and a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. She is an alum of New Dramatists and of Mount Holyoke College.