Susan Cheever
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2022}}
{{Short description|American author}}
{{Infobox writer
| birth_name = Susan Cheever
| image = Susan Cheever - 5736916517.jpg
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1943|7|31|mf=y}}
| occupation = Writer: memoirist
| genre = nonfiction, memoir|
| notableworks = {{plainlist|
- Home Before Dark
}}
}}
Susan Cheever (born July 31, 1943) is an American author{{cite web|title=Susan Cheever|url=https://www.pbs.org/lifepart2/perspectives/susan-cheever|publisher=PBS|accessdate=October 8, 2012}} and a prize-winning best-selling writer well known for her memoir, her writing about alcoholism, and her intimate understanding of American history. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award. She currently teaches in the MFA program at The New School in New York City.
Biography
Cheever is the daughter of novelist John Cheever and poet/professor Mary Cheever.{{cite news |title=Mary Cheever, a Central Figure in a Literary Family, Dies at 95 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/arts/mary-cheever-a-central-figure-in-a-literary-family-dies-at-95.html |newspaper=New York Times |date=April 9, 2014}} She has two brothers, Benjamin Cheever and the late Federico Cheever.{{cite web |title=Frederico Cheever obituary |url=https://www.horancares.com/obituary/Federico-Cheever}} Cheever has been married three times and divorced twice. Cheever married Robert Cowley, the son of Malcolm Cowley, in 1967. The couple divorced 8 years later.{{cite news|last=Smilgis|first=Martha|title=The Daughter Also Rises: Susan Cheever Writes a Novel That Makes Father John Proud|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20075739,00.html|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140505021914/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20075739,00.html|archive-date= May 5, 2014 |access-date =January 6, 2023|newspaper=People|date=February 4, 1980}} Cheever's second husband was Calvin Tomkins, II, whom she married in 1981. Cheever and Tomkins have a daughter Sarah.{{cite news|last=Hodgman|first=Ann|title=Quality Time|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/books/quality-time.html|accessdate=October 8, 2012|newspaper=New York Times|date=June 10, 2001}} Cheever married her third husband, Warren James Hinckle III, in 1989.{{cite news|last=Mitford|first=Jessica|title=Standing and delivery: From total immersion to drug cocktails, from birthing stools to the 'Empathy Belly', there are more fashions in childbirth than in hemlines.|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/standing-and-delivery-from-total-immersion-to-drug-cocktails-from-birthing-stools-to-the-empathy-belly-there-are-more-fashions-in-childbirth-than-in-hemlines-in-this-extract-from-a-new-book-the-author-of-a-celebrated-analysis-of-the-american-way-of-death-examines-the-american-way-of-giving-birth-1555380.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090923194742/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/standing-and-delivery-from-total-immersion-to-drug-cocktails-from-birthing-stools-to-the-empathy-belly-there-are-more-fashions-in-childbirth-than-in-hemlines-in-this-extract-from-a-new-book-the-author-of-a-celebrated-analysis-of-the-american-way-of-death-examines-the-american-way-of-giving-birth-1555380.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=September 23, 2009|accessdate=October 8, 2012|newspaper=The Independent|date=October 4, 1992}} Cheever and Hinckle have a son, Warren Hinckle IV, who was born in November 1989.{{cite news|last=Boulware|first=Jack|title=Hinckle, Hinckle, Little Star (Part II)|url=http://www.sfweekly.com/1996-02-14/news/hinkle-hinkle-little-star-part-ii/3/addComment/4/1/4/2/|accessdate=October 8, 2012|newspaper=San Francisco Weekly|date=February 14, 1996}}
Career
Cheever's most recent book, published in 2015, is Drinking in America: Our Secret History. The book chronicles how alcohol has influenced the history of the United States.{{cite news|last1=Italie|first1=Leanne|title=Susan Cheever chronicles drinking in America in new book|url=http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/susan-cheever-chronicles-drinking-in-america-in-new-book/|accessdate=October 16, 2015|agency=Associated Press|publisher=Seattle Times|date=October 14, 2015}} Her other books include My Name is Bill - Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, a biography of Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson; Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, novelist John Cheever; Treetops: A Memoir; and five novels: Looking for Work, A Handsome Man, The Cage, Doctors and Women, and Elizabeth Cole. Her essay "Baby Battle," in which she describes immersion in early motherhood and subsequent phases of letting go of her primary identity as a mother, was included in the 2006 anthology Mommy Wars by Leslie Morgan Steiner. Her most recent biography, E.E. Cummings: A Life was reviewed in The New York Times,{{cite news|title=Lives of the Poets|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/susan-cheevers-e-e-cummings-and-more.html?emc=eta1&_r=0|website=The New York Times| date=April 18, 2014 |accessdate=January 19, 2015| last1=Fried | first1=Daisy }} The New Yorker,{{cite magazine|title=Paul Muldoon -- Charles Wright In The New Yorker|url=http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/paul-muldoon/all|magazine=The New Yorker|accessdate=January 19, 2015}} and was selected as one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist ("With boundless new detail gathered through meticulous research, Susan Cheever succeeds where most other biographers have failed...."){{cite news|title=Books of the Year|url=https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21635446-best-books-2014-were-about-south-china-sea-fall-berlin-wall-kaiser|newspaper=The Economist|accessdate=January 19, 2015}} and The San Francisco Chronicle.{{cite web|title=Best of 2014|url=http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Best-of-2014-100-recommended-books-5978350.php|website=sfgate.com|date=December 24, 2014 |accessdate=January 19, 2015}}
Cheever is the author of American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work, published in December 2006. Cheever was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1983. She graduated from Brown University in 1965 and studied American Literature at New York University. She is also a member of the Corporation of Yaddo and serves on the Author's Guild Council. In addition to working on her books, she teaches in the Bennington College M.F.A. program and at The New School.
Cheever is the author of Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction, which was published in 2008.{{cite news|title=A Writer Alone at Last|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/garden/25cheever.html?pagewanted=all|accessdate=October 8, 2012|newspaper=New York Times|date=October 24, 2008}}
She is working on a book about her father's short stories.{{cn|date=January 2023}}
Awards and honors
{{expand list|date=September 2012}}
- 1985 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Home Before Dark
- 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award, Nominee
- 1996 The Michael Q. Ford Journalism Award for her Newsday columns , Cheever was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team
- 2017 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Long-listed for Nonfiction Prize
Bibliography
- Looking For Work (1979)
- A Handsome Man (1981)
- The Cage (1982)
- Home Before Dark (1984)
- Doctors & Women (1987)
- Elizabeth Cole (1989)
- Treetops: A Memoir About Raising Wonderful Children in an Imperfect World (1991)
- A Woman's Life: The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extroardinary Generation (1994)
- Jrnls John Cheever #1 (1995)
- Note Found in a Bottle (1999)
- My Name is Bill: Bill Wilson-- His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (2004)
- American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau - Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work (2006)
- Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction (2008)
- Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (2010)
- E.E. Cummings: A Life (2014)
- Drinking in America: Our Secret History (2016)
References
{{reflist}}
External links
{{Commons category}}
- [http://www.susancheever.com/ Susan Cheever] official website
- [http://www.thedailybeast.com/author/susan-cheever/ Column archive] at The Daily Beast
- {{C-SPAN|1010025}}
- {{NYTtopic|people/c/susan_cheever}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070704100713/http://badgirlsanthology.com/ Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave] includes "Alma Mater", an essay by Susan Cheever (2007)
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20080521155007/http://www.theotherwomananthology.com/ The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal] includes "In Praise of Married Men," an essay by Susan Cheever (2007)
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cheever, Susan}}
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:Pembroke College in Brown University alumni
Category:Brown University alumni
Category:The New School faculty
Category:Place of birth missing (living people)
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:American women novelists
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:Novelists from New York (state)
Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers
Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers
Category:American women memoirists