Hey there, I’m so happy you came to visit me! I am terrible about talking about myself and would much rather hear about you you you, but I’ve written a few salacious facts below in case you are interested and you can hit me up for pictures if you absolutely can’t live without them because I have absolutely none (well, one) on my site since I am horribly un-photogenic. Browse around if you want a great book to read, a great book deal (editing), if you are interested in attending a writing salon, or if you want some one-on-one hobnob time about the book you are working on!
I was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Guilford, Connecticut. But I have also lived in Africa, Southeast Asia, Manhattan, the Deep South, the Southwest, Mexico and Panama. In 1997, I received my dance teacher certification for K-12 in the Laban Technique and have choreographed for Bread and Puppet and worked for Jacques Dambois’ National Dance Institute in Soho. For about eight years I facilitated study abroad programs in Africa, but I had an addiction, so I quit. The addiction, of course, was writing. And, later, editing.
Because my first novel was set in Mississippi, I quit my job, my lover and my life and ran down south to get swallowed up (in a beautiful way) by the cotton fields, the juke joints, the stories and the southern food. The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me, a coming-of-age novel about four young people during a steamy summer in the south, sold in less than a week for six figures to Scribner, and The Gospel According to Gracey soon followed. Both have been optioned for film and translated extensively in foreign markets.
What I came to understand in the writing and publishing of these books was that I had an incredible gift for editing, for writing queries, navigating the New York publishing world and encouraging writers to follow their dreams. I wanted to work to make writers into authors. So, in 2005, I went back to school for my MFA in the literary arts and creative writing. I attribute much of my editing success and my writers’ successes to working with incredibly skilled mentors like Susan Cheever, Tom Bissell, Amy Hempel and Christine Schutt. I also studied with Frank Conroy at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop before he died and his protégé, the novelist, Fred Lebron.
In 2007 I began to work with people who were dying to write books and needed a little guidance to make it happen. Editing is for me about allowing. It’s about listening. It’s about empowering the author to reach his or her vision. I believe the editor should be almost invisible, a wise, very deft, sweet voice in your head that says, quietly, You can! And then gives you the skills you need to reach your goals and, ultimately, reach past them. I believe visions are dictums from a higher source and my job is to help your dreams come to fruition. I love editing because I feel the surge of grace that comes from allowing a writer to come into her own as an author. It’s amazingly gratifying to watch a writer gain the skills and the self-confidence s/he needs to meet the publishing world on her own terms. It’s also fun to see you get book deals and great reviews and sell tons and tons of books. The work is not about me, though, it is wholly about you, the gifts and treasures you hold inside and the ways in which we can make those bloom in the world.
In 2007, congruent with my editing business, I founded an organization called Wild Words (come visit us here!) which offers workshops, editing help and resources to writers and is based on a model of neuro-theology discovered at Penn and Harvard which teaches the student to cease negative activity in the brain and so allows the creative part of the mind to take over. It is extremely powerful work and creates an almost alchemical reaction in both the teacher (me!) and the student. It has changed lives. I use the Wild Words model in my editing work and have taught Wild Words workshops at Mississippi State, The University of Georgia, PIMA writing program, Ohio Wesleyan University, the Lost State Writer’s Conference, Tennessee’s Council for the Written Word and in prisons and secondary schools across the country.
I did write a third book. The Peace of Wild Things was set in Panama. I lived in Panama off and on for five years while writing this book and finally sent it to my agent a few years ago. But as soon as the manuscript left my hands, I knew it wasn’t meant for the world, and I pulled it back. It was one of the most courageous things I’ve ever done and a turning point in my personal and writing life. You can write me to hear more about that little drama.
I am now working on the novel, Jesse’s Last Ride, a wild book about four young people on Connecticut’s gold coast during the Regan era. I hope it will finish and send itself out soon, but I am not pressuring it. I am also working on a book called The Juicy Taboo with yoga guru (she hates it when I call her that, but sorry, it’s true!) Diana Whitney, founder of Core Flow Yoga and author of the syndicated column Spilt Milk. The Juicy Taboo is about finding again what we lost as women. It’s a sort of Women Who Run with the Wolves meets Eat Pray Love, and I will let you know when it hits the stands. Talk show host Desha Peacock (of the Desha Show) and I are also writing a book based on The Sweet Spot Workshops. The Sweet Spot workshop combines Desha’s magical manifestation techniques with the Wild Words methods. The next workshop is our annual spring time Santa Barbara extravaganza, three days of manifesting your dreams and blowing past all your limits March 16-18, you can click here to find out more about it!
Besides writing and editing I’ve done a lot of other literary activity that might be mildly interesting but also might sound like navel gazing. I was the co-editor of the anthology of southern writers, The Alumni Grill (Macadam and Cage, 2004) and have been anthologized in The Blue Moon Café and At My Grandmother’s Table and Birds of a Feather and my writing has appeared in Atlanta Magazine and Glamour magazine, among many others. I won the 1999 Oxford Town Fiction Prize, have been an artist-in-residency at Yaddo and the Ledig House, and am one of the principal organizers of The Brattleboro Literary Festival.
But a lot of times you’ll just find me peacefully tucked away in my “casbah” above the Connecticut River where I live with my husband and where I offer salons to adults and kids in a space filled with my grandmother’s ancient Oriental rugs and low slung velveteen couches, the whole place is lit by beaded lamps, and masks from my travels cover the wall. We always have tons of chocolate. Come on over, and I’ll touch you with the magic writing wand, which is infamous in my kids’ groups. If you knock, do it loudly because I might be meditating or doing yoga with my Krishna Das chants on high. I adore owls and children and all of you writers and readers. I’d love to hear from you, so send me a love note, and I’ll send one back. With sweetness, until next time, Suzanne