Douglas M. Parker (born May 25, 1963) is a playwright best known for biographical and reality-based plays. His works include BESSIE: The Life and Music of Bessie Smith (2005), a play with music about the rise and fall of the great American blues singer; Life on the Mississippi (2006), a play about the young Samuel Clemens leaving home to learn about steamboat piloting, adapted from Mark Twain's autobiographical book of the same title; Declarations (2007), a one-act play drawn from the letters of John and Abigail Adams from their earliest courtship through the summer of 1776; Life on the Mississippi, a musical, based on his play (2008); Thicker Than Water (2009), a drama based on the Andrea Yates murders; and "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" (2011), based on Twain's comic mem