Susan Shreve

Susan Shreve
Susan Shreve at 2012 Fall for the Book
Occupation	novelist, professor
Nationality	American
Education	University of Pennsylvania; University of Virginia

Susan Richards Shreve is an American novelist, memoirist, and children’s book author. She has published fourteen novels, most recently You Are the Love of My Life (2012), and a memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood (2007). She has also published thirty books for children, most recently The Lovely Shoes (2011), and co-edited five anthologies. Shreve founded the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing program at George Mason University in 1980, where she teaches fiction writing. She is the co-chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She lives in Washington, DC.

Personal life

Susan Richards was born in Toledo, Ohio, but moved with her family to Washington, DC at the age of three.

She married Porter Shreve, with whom she had four children. Shreve later married noted literary agent Timothy Seldes. Her oldest son is the author Porter Shreve.

Career

Shreve received a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1961, and an MA in English from the University of Virginia in 1969. She founded the MFA in Creative Writing program at George Mason University in 1980 and has taught there ever since. She has been a visiting professor at Columbia School of the Arts, Princeton University, and Goucher College. She has received a Guggenheim Award for Fiction, a National Endowment grant for Fiction, the Jenny Moore Chair in Creative Writing at George Washington University, the Grub Street Prize for non-fiction, the Poets and Writers’ Service award, and the Sidwell Friends School Outstanding Alumni Award.[1]

Shreve published her first novel, A Fortunate Madness, in 1974. Thirteen novels have followed. A Country of Strangers (1989), "a sweet, sad portrait of two families, one white, one black, living side by side in Virginia during WW II".is under option for film. She published a novel Glimmer under the pseudonym Annie Waters in 1997. Shreve wrote about her experience as a patient at FDR's polio clinic in her memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood (2007). Her most recent novel is You Are the Love of My Life (2012).

Shreve's children's books include the Joshua T. Bates series (1984-2000), Blister (2001), an ALA Notable Book and a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book, and most recently The Lovely Shoes (2011). When writing for young readers, she publishes as Susan Shreve.

Works

Novels

• You Are the Love of My Life (2012)
• A Student of Living Things (2006)
• Plum and Jaggers (2000)
• Glimmer, published under the pseudonym Annie Waters (1997)
• The Visiting Physician (1996)
• The Train Home, Nan A. Talese (1993)
• Daughters of the New World (1992)
• A Country of Strangers (1990)
• Queen of hearts (1986)
• Dreaming of Heroes (1984)
• Miracle Play, Morrow (1981)
• Children of Power (1979)
• A Woman Like That (1977)
• A fortunate madness (1974)

Memoir

Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven (2007)

Edited Anthologies

• Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing up in America (2003)
• With son Porter Shreve:
  • Tales out of School: Contemporary Writers on Their Student Years (2000)
  • How We Want to Live: Narratives on Progress (1998)
  • Outside the Law: Narratives on Justice (1997)
• With Marita Golden:
  • Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race (1995)

Novels for Children

• The Lovely Shoes (2011)
• Under the Watson's Porch (2004)
• Trout and Me, Knopf (2002)
• Blister, companion novel to Jonah, the Whale (2001)
• Ghost Cats (1999)
• Jonah, the Whale (1998)
• Warts, illustrated by Gregg Thorkelson (1996)
• The Goalie (1996)
• Zoe and Columbo (1995)
• The Formerly Great Alexander Family, illustrated by Chris Cart (1995)
• Lucy Forever, Miss Rosetree, and the Stolen Baby (1994)
• Amy Dunn Quits School (1993)
• Wait for Me (1992)
• The Gift of the Girl Who Couldn't Hear, Morrow (1991)
• Lily and the Runaway Baby, illustrated by Sue Truesdell (1987)
• Lucy Forever and Miss Rosetree, Shrinks (1987)
• How I Saved the World on Purpose, illustrated by Suzanne Richardson (1985)
• The Bad Dreams of a Good Girl, illustrated by Diane de Groat (1982)
• The Revolution of Mary Leary (1982)
• The Masquerade, Knopf (1980)
• Family Secrets: Five Very Important Stories, illustrated by Richard Cuffari (1979)
• Loveletters, Knopf (1978)
• The Nightmares of Geranium Street, Knopf (1977)

External links

• http://english.gmu.edu/people/sshreve