KATORI HALL

Katori Hall felt her popular play about Black strip club culture could easily become a television series.

When Katori Hall first pitched the idea to convert her popular play about Black strip club culture into the television series “P-Valley,” the Pulitzer Prize winner was either quickly rejected after meeting with networks or denied before she could fully explain the concept. Hall struggled to find support from some network executives who thought the concept would be exploitative of Black women, in light of the history of casting them in hypersexualized roles on screen. Hall, who is a Black woman, understood they wanted to avoid any backlash, but her overall vision was focused on humanizing exotic dancers — which Starz heard with “open ears.”

Katori Hall, the creator of the superb Southern series "P-Valley," talks about “the hardest job” she’s ever had: documenting the pandemic during the pandemic.

Pulitzer Prize-winning work by Katori Hall runs at Studio Theatre through July 31

One of the country’s most esteemed novelists, Louise Erdrich, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “The Night Watchman.”.