Suzan-Lori Parks is a multi-award-winning American playwright and the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog.  Parks’ adaptation of The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess won the 2012 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.  Her other works includes The Book of Grace, Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Musical, In the Blood, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, The America Play and Fucking A.  Her project 365 Days/365 Plays - where she wrote a play a day for an entire year - was produced in over 700 theatres worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots collaborations in theatre history. A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, her novel Getting Mother’s Body is published by Random House. She also works extensively in film and television, most recently, as the screenwriter for The United States vs Billie Holiday and, also premiering earlier this year, as showrunner/executive producer/head writer for Genius: Aretha. In her spare time she writes songs and fronts her band Sula & The Noise.