On Tuesday, October 30, visionary playwright and MacArthur “Genius” Award winner, Suzan-Lori Parks, will be the featured speaker of this year’s Mitchell Artist Lecture. Parks is the first African-American woman to receive the Pulit­zer Prize in Drama for the Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave.” In addition to her extensive playwriting bibliography, including many experimental works, Parks has written screenplays for Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, including Girl 6 written for Spike Lee, and adapted Zora Neale Hurston’s clas­sic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The great writer, James Baldwin, declared Parks “an astonishing and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time.”

The annual Mitchell Artist Lecture features individuals emblematic of artistic collaboration and innovation. Each fall, a leading artist discusses the power and potential of interdisciplinary collaboration to a combined audience of university community and the greater public. Past speakers include Tania Bruguera, Jason and Alicia Hall Moran, Laurie Anderson, Bill T. Jones, and The Yes Men. The Mitchell Artist Lecture is presented by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, which is part of the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts.