Susan Straight (born October 19, 1960) is an American writer. She was a National Book Award finalist for the novel Highwire Moon in 2001.

Susan Straight
Straight in 2010
Born	(1960-10-19) October 19, 1960 (age 62) Riverside, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Riverside Community College, University of Southern California, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Occupation	Writer
Years active	1990–present
Website	susanstraight.com

Biography

This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (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 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.

Straight lives in Riverside, California. She has three daughters.

Awards and honors

• 1990 Milkweed National Fiction Prize for Aquaboogie [1]
• 2001 finalist, National Book Award for Fiction for Highwire Moon ^{[citation needed]}
• 2007 Lannan Literary Award (Fiction) ^{[citation needed]}
• 2008 Edgar Allan Poe Award for short story "The Golden Gopher".[2]
• 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Robert Kirsch Award.[3]

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (October 2015)

Novels

• Straight, Susan (1991). Aquaboogie: A Novel in Stories. Minneapolis, Minn.: Milkweed Editions.
• I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots (1993)
• Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights (1995)
• The Gettin' Place (1997)
• Highwire Moon (2001) – finalist for the National Book Award
• A Million Nightingales (2006)
• Take One Candle Light a Room (2010)
• Between Heaven and Here (2012)
• Mecca (2022)[4]

Short fiction

• "Mines," The Best American Short Stories 2003 (2003)
• "Poinciana," The Cocaine Chronicles (2005)
• "The Golden Gopher," Los Angeles Noir (2007)[2]
• "El Ojo de Agua," The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 (2007)
• "The Princess of Valencia," Amazon Original Stories (2018)[5]
• "The Perseids," Granta (2018)[6]

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)
• 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)
• Straight, Susan (Mar–Apr 2013). "November 24, 1963 : what my brother left behind". The Believer. 11 (3): 25–28. Retrieved 2015-10-16.

References

External links

• Official website
• Essays by Susan Straight at Salon
• Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts Master's degree program at UC-Riverside
• Straight's Introduction to the Inlandia anthology
• The UMass MFA Program for Poets & Writers
• Susan Straight at Library of Congress Authorities, with 11 catalog records
• Karen Grigsby Bates, "Author Susan Straight Takes Us 'In The Country Of Women'", NPR, January 29, 2020.