AUTHOR OF THE WEEK August 30
Susan Cheever
(Fiction, Memoir, Biography, American History)
“I believe that the memoir is the novel of the 21st century; it’s an amazing form that we haven’t even begun to tap…we’re just getting started figuring out what the rules are.”
“What makes someone want to be a writer? Clearly, one thing this dream requires is a ferocious hunger, a hunger for recognition, a yearning to be heard that roars through the soul with a sound so great that the stories often feel as if they are discovered rather than invented.”
“Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it—it’s almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person. When one is in the grip of an obsession, everything else—children, regular meals, sleep, work—is swept away.”
Susan Cheever (born 1943), an American author is the recipient of the PEN New England Award. She is daughter of novelist John Cheever. She is best known for Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, John Cheever, and American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. Cheever’s most recent book is Drinking in America: Our Secret History. The book chronicles how alcohol has influenced the history of the United States. Her biographies of Louisa May Alcott and E.E. Cummings are critically acclaimed. Her novels are Doctors and Women, The Cage, A Handsome Man, and Looking for Work. One of her favorite books is Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. She grew up in Tarrytown, NY.
Susan Cheever at New York State Writers Institute (4 minutes):
Susan Cheever discusses how she resists “memoir shame” and addresses readers curiosity.
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Paula Cappa 