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." 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.
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.
Aquaboogie: A Novel in Stories, (1990) (Milkweed National Fiction Prize)
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, (October 12, 2010)
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)
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)
