Born Jacqueline Rosen in Winnipeg in 1925, she grew up during the harsh years of the Depression. Park has very clear recollections of that uncertain time which left deep scars.

Park is the founding chairman of the Dramatic Writing Program and professor emerita at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Park is an acclaimed novelist, currently working on the third installment of a three-part literary saga that began with The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi, a remarkable 15th-century Italian Jewish woman, and continues with newly published The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi, about the travails of Grazia’s son in the court of the Ottoman ruler, Suleiman the Great.

The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi, published in 1997, became an acclaimed, international bestseller. But Park, then 72, was not finished writing. “I came from television,” she said, “where the motto is: Always leave room for a sequel.”

Park lives in Toronto.