Novelist, Poet, Educator

My Story

I was born in a little town called Farmingdale on Long Island, New York. Sounds rural and charming but, alas, it’s not. It is a typical suburb outside of New York City with houses that all look the same, a small Main Street with a couple of drug stores (one of which was owned by my family), a movie theater and a bank. I was the middle of three girls, and had a childhood surrounded by the attention of two loving parents and four doting grandparents—a situation which is now, sadly, unusual. If asked, I would probably say that it was the good luck of having all four grandparents in my life throughout my childhood that gave me that love of storytelling and appreciation for language which helped create the writer I am today.

But rather than ramble on about the wheres and whats of my life, how about I tell you ten secrets?

  • I’ve played the vi­olin since I was 7 years old. (This isn’t really a secret, but I con­stantly for­get to men­tion it. Why is that?)
  • I wrote my first play at age 8. It was about a fam­ily of mice. It was genius, I think…
  • I have done all the course­work to­wards a PhD in Clas­sics, but some­how never got around to fin­ish­ing my dis­ser­ta­tion. (Don’t tell my stu­dents.)
  • I traveled around Europe in a VW van when I was 18. We never did tell my grand­mother.
  • My fa­vour­ite singer is Jimi Hendrix (I like to pre­tend I’m still a hip­pie).
  • I’ve been mar­ried for a very long time and we have two grown sons. An­other son died of SIDS (cot death) when he was 5 weeks old.
  • My fam­ily moved from Rus­sia to New York. I moved from New York to Lon­don. In 2016 we moved back to the States. The move east­ward made them nervous. The move west­ward made me nervous.
  • I have un­con­trol­lable wan­der­lust. Maybe that’s not really a secret.
  • I have an un­set­tling ob­ses­sion with the idea of ab­sinthe.
  • I still think I’m 27 years old, and prob­ably al­ways will.

Books

A Clash of Innocents

Against the back­drop of Cam­bodia’s vi­ol­ent past and the be­gin­nings of its new Tribunal for justice, a story of dis­placed souls un­folds in this first...

Out of the Ruins

Out of the Ruins be­gins with one Cam­bod­ian doc­tor’s frus­tra­tion over how the poor women in his coun­try are dying need­lessly...

Her Life Collected

Maiden, woman, crone—three tra­di­tional stages in the fe­male lifespan. In Sue Guiney’s Her Life Col­lec­ted, these stages are re-en­vi­sioned...

Dreams of May

Fea­tur­ing twenty-two poems for a single voice, Sue Guiney’s Dreams of May fol­lows a jour­ney that starts on a train and travels through...

Contact Author

Feel free to contact Sue

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