Susan Straight
{{short description|American writer (born 1960)}}
{{Infobox person
|name=Susan Straight
|image=Susan straight 2010.jpg
|caption=Straight in 2010
|birth_date={{birth date and age|1960|10|19}}
|birth_place=Riverside, California, U.S.
|occupation=Writer
|years_active = 1990–present
|education = Riverside Community College
University of Southern California
University of Massachusetts Amherst (MFA)
|website = {{URL|https://susanstraight.com/}}
}}
Susan Straight (born October 19, 1960) is an American writer. She was a National Book Award finalist for the novel Highwire Moon in 2001.
Biography
{{BLP unreferenced section|date=December 2018}}
Susan Straight attended John W. North High School in Riverside, California and took classes at Riverside Community College while in high school. She went on to earn a scholarship to the University of Southern California and, in 1984, earned her M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. She co-founded the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts program at University of California, Riverside, where she is currently a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing and the director of the graduate program.
Straight has published eight novels, a novel for young readers and a children's book. She has also written essays and articles for numerous national publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation and Harper's Magazine, and is a frequent contributor to NPR and Salon. Her story "Mines", first published in Zoetrope: All-Story, was included in The Best American Short Stories 2003.
Personal life
{{BLP unreferenced section|date=April 2024}}
Straight lives in Riverside, California. She has three daughters.
Awards and honors
| class="wikitable sortable"
!Year !Title !Award !Category !Result !{{Abbr|Ref |
|-
!1990
|Aquaboogie
|Milkweed National Fiction Prize
|—
|{{Won}}
|-
!2001
|Highwire Moon
|{{Sho|Finalist}}
|-
!2007
|—
|Fiction
|{{Won}}
|-
!2008
|"The Golden Gopher"
|{{Won}}
|-
!2013
|—
|
|{{cite news |author=Carolyn Kellogg |date=April 11, 2014 |title=Jacket Copy: The winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes are ... |url=http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-winners-los-angeles-times-book-prizes-20140411,0,4418200.story |access-date=April 14, 2014 |newspaper=LA Times}}
|}
Bibliography
{{Incomplete list|date=October 2015}}
=Novels=
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=Aquaboogie: A Novel in Stories |url=https://archive.org/details/aquaboogienoveli00stra |url-access=registration |location=Minneapolis, Minn. |author-mask=2 |publisher=Milkweed Editions |year=1991 |isbn=9780915943593}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=1993 |isbn=}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=1995 |isbn=}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=The Gettin' Place |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=1997 |isbn=}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=Highwire Moon |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=2001 |isbn=}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=A Million Nightingales |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=2006 |isbn=}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=Take One Candle Light a Room |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=2010 |isbn=}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=Between Heaven and Here |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=2012 |isbn=}}
- {{cite book |author=Straight, Susan |title=Mecca |url= |location= |author-mask=2 |publisher= |year=2022 |isbn=}}{{Cite web |title=Fiction Book Review: Mecca by Susan Straight. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28 (384p) ISBN 978-0-374-60451-6 |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-374-60451-6 |access-date=2022-02-24 |website=PublishersWeekly.com |language=en}}
= Short fiction =
| class='wikitable sortable' width='90%' |
| |Year
! width="25%" |Title !|First published !|Reprinted/collected |
|---|
| ????
|Tulsa, 1921 |???? |{{cite book |editor1=Golden, Marita |editor2=Shreve, Susan Richards |title=Skin deep : Black women & White women write about race |url=https://archive.org/details/skindeepblackwom00gold |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Nan A. Talese |year=1995 |isbn=9780385474092}} |
| 2003
|"Mines" | |
| 2005
|"Poinciana" |The Cocaine Chronicles | |
| rowspan="2" |2007
|"The Golden Gopher" |Los Angeles Noir | |
| "El Ojo de Agua"
|The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 | |
| rowspan="2" |2018
|"The Princess of Valencia" |Amazon Original Stories{{Cite book |last=Straight |first=Susan |url=https://www.amazon.com/Princess-Valencia-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B078N5PHXT/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517623508&sr=8-1&keywords=the+princess+of+valencia+amazon+originals&dpID=51yuWwyc8vL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch |title=The Princess of Valencia |date=2018-02-27 |publisher=Amazon Original Stories |language=English}} | |
| "The Perseids"
|Granta{{Cite web |date=2018-05-03 |title=The Perseids |url=https://granta.com/the-perseids/ |access-date=2022-02-24 |website=Granta |language=en-US}} | |
= For younger readers =
- Bear E. Bear (1995)
- The Friskative Dog (2007)
= Nonfiction =
- In the Country of Women (2019)
=Essays, reporting and other contributions=
- Race: An Anthology in the First Person (essay, "Letter to My Daughters") (1997)
- Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood (essay, "One Drip at a Time") (1999)
- When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories (essay, "Country Music") (2002)
- Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com (essay, "Love Me, Love My Guns") (2003)
- Dog Is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World's Oldest Friendship (essay, "Brave and Noble Is the Preschool Dog") (2003)
- Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendships (essay, "Cartilage") (2004)
- Little Women (afterword) (2004)
- Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves (essay, "The Belly Unbuttoned") (2005)
- I Married My Mother-in-law And Other Tales of In-laws We Can't Live With - And Can't Live Without (essay, "A Family You Can't Divorce") (2006)
- Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California's Inland Empire (introduction) (2006)
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070704100713/http://badgirlsanthology.com/ Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave] (essay, "Reckless") (July 2007)
- The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concertgoing Experience (essay, "The Funk Festival at Los Angeles Coliseum, Los Angeles, May 26, 1979") (2007)
- {{cite journal |author=Straight, Susan |date=Mar–Apr 2013 |title=November 24, 1963 : what my brother left behind |journal=The Believer |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=25–28 |url=http://www.believermag.com/issues/201303/?read=article_straight |access-date=2015-10-16}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{official website|susanstraight.com}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070610095953/http://dir.salon.com/topics/susan_straight/ Essays by Susan Straight] at Salon
- [http://www.creativewriting.ucr.edu/graduate/index.html Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts] Master's degree program at UC-Riverside
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070211081644/http://www.californiaauthors.com/excerpt-straight.shtml Straight's Introduction to the Inlandia anthology]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20060423191757/http://www.umass.edu/english/eng/mfa/ The UMass MFA Program for Poets & Writers]
- {{LCAuth|n90655860|Susan Straight|11|}}
- Karen Grigsby Bates, [https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/01/29/401833877/author-susan-straight-takes-us-in-the-country-of-women?t=1581066189911 "Author Susan Straight Takes Us 'In The Country Of Women'"], NPR, January 29, 2020.
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Straight, Susan}}
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:American women novelists
Category:Writers from Riverside, California
Category:University of California, Riverside faculty
Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets & Writers alumni
Category:Riverside City College alumni
Category:20th-century American women writers