Meet the Author

Living in Washington, D.C. after college, Suzanne Feldman says she experienced a political awakening, a perspective found in her prize-winning story. "I started working for left-wing, politically active organizations, and at that time, Reagan's secret wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua were just coming to light.  It was incredible to me that people who had lost everything could continue to function, even create new lives.  It's simplistic to say their stories were horrific—but they were."  

Feldman's writing was also influenced by the stories of her father, a Holocaust survivor. "I grew up hearing his stories of escape." Another experience that led her to write involved a cultural exchange trip to Mexico, traveling the country with a dozen other teachers and an archaeologist from Mexico City. She says the images, the culture, the history—"to say nothing of the food"—has influenced almost everything she's written since.  

Her literary influences include Gabriel García Márquez, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, and William Faulkner, as well as her professors from her Masters program at Johns Hopkins, Alice McDermott and Stephen Dixon. The most helpful writing advice that Suzanne ever received came from Alice McDermott: "She said to me, 'You don't have to write that story in chronological order.'  My God, that was freeing."

Like the narrator of "Secret Histories," Suzanne studied art at the Maryland Institute of Art, where she still teaches on occasion.