Susan Straight

Susan Straight (born October 19, 1960 in Riverside, California) is an American author and National Book Award finalist.

Background

Susan Straight has published six 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.com". Her story "Mines," first published in "Zoetrope All Story", was included in Best American Short Stories 2003. She won a Lannan Literary Award in 2007. She won a 2008 Edgar Allan Poe Award for her short story "The Golden Gopher."cite web |title=Mystery Writers of America Announces the 2008 Edgar Award Winners |date=2008-05-01 |url=http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-01-2008/0004805000 |accessdate=2009-05-02] She is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside and lives in Riverside, California with two of her three daughters, her oldest now attending Oberlin College.

Academic career

As a student at Riverside Community College, Straight received encouragement to pursue her writing. 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 at 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 teaching.

Works

Novels

*"I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots", (1993)
*"Aquaboogie: A Novel in Stories", (1994) (Milkweed National Fiction Prize)
*"Blacker than a Thousand Midnights", (1995)
*"The Gettin' Place", (1997)
*"Highwire Moon", (2001) (finalist for the National Book Award)
*"A Million Nightingales", (2006)

Anthologized stories and essays

*"Skin Deep: Black Women & White Women Write About Race" (novel excerpt, "Tulsa, 1921") (1996)
*"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)
*"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)
*"The Best American Short Stories 2003" (short story, "Mines") (2003)
*"Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendships" (essay, "Cartilage") (2004)
*"Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves " (essay, "The Belly Unbuttoned") (2005)
*"The Cocaine Chronicles" (short story, "Poinciana") (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)
*" [http://www.badgirlsanthology.com Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave] " (essay, "Reckless") (July 2007)
*"Los Angeles Noir" (story, "The Golden Gopher") (2007)
*"The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007" (short story, "El Ojo de Agua") (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)

As contributor

*"Little Women" (afterword) (2004)
*"Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California's Inland Empire" (introduction) (2006)

For younger readers

*"Bear E. Bear", (1995)
*"The Friskative Dog", (2007)

References

External links

* [http://dir.salon.com/topics/susan_straight/ Salon.com essays by Susan Straight]
* [http://www.creativewriting.ucr.edu/graduate/index.html UCR MFA Program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts]
* [http://www.californiaauthors.com/excerpt-straight.shtml Straight's Introduction to the Inlandia anthology]
* [http://www.umass.edu/english/eng/mfa/ The UMass MFA Program for Poets & Writers]