Susan Minot (born December 7, 1956) is an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while othe ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

writer, poet, playwright, screenwriter and painter.

Early life

Minot was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in

Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts Manchester-by-the-Sea (also known simply as Manchester, its name prior to 1989) is a coastal town on Cape Ann, in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is known for scenic beaches and vista points. According to the 2020 population ...

. Her father, George Richards Minot, was born in 1927 and worked as a banker and stockbroker in Boston. Her mother, born Helen Ruth Hannon in 1929, known as Carrie Minot, was a mother and homemaker, was killed on January 16, 1978, when the car she was driving was hit at a train crossing, the signals being down after an ice storm.

Career

Minot's first book, ''

Monkeys Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...

'', won the 1987 Prix Femina étranger in France and was published in a dozen countries. Her other books, all published internationally, are ''Lust & Other Stories,'' ''Folly,'' ''Evening,'' ''Rapture,'' ''Poems 4 A.M.'' and ''Thirty Girls''. In 1984, she received first prize in

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors ar ...

for her story "Hiding." Among the anthologies that include her fiction are ''The Best American Short Stories'' 1984 and 1985 and the ''Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories'' 1985, 1989 and 2011. Minot's poems and stories have been published in ''The New Yorker'', ''Grand Street'', ''The Paris Review'', ''GQ'', ''Kenyon Review'', ''River City'', ''New England Review'', ''Swink'', ''Mississippi Review'', ''H.O.W.'', ''British Marie Claire'', ''Fiction'', ''Northwest Humanities Review'' and ''Atlantic Monthly''. Her nonfiction and travel writing have appeared in ''The Best American Travel Writing 2001'' and ''McSweeney's'', ''New York Times'', ''Paris Review'', ''Vogue'', ''Travel and Leisure'', ''Esquire'', ''American Scholar'', ''House & Garden'', ''Condé Nast Traveller'', ''Victoria'', and ''Porter Magazine''. Minot has taught creative writing at New York University, Stony Brook Southampton, and Columbia University. Minot wrote the screenplay for '' Stealing Beauty'' (1996) with

Bernardo Bertolucci Bernardo Bertolucci (; 16 March 1941 – 26 November 2018) was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved international ...

, and co-authored '' Evening'' (based on her novel of the same name) with Michael Cunningham. Minot's book of poems ''Poems 4 AM'' was published in 2002. ''The Little Locksmith,'' a play based on the book by Katharine Butler Hathaway (1942), was performed in North Haven, Maine in 2002, starring Linda Hunt.

Themes and criticism

Time, death and desire are main themes in Minot's work. Sexuality and relationships, romantic and familial, are explored. Her second book, ''Lust & Other Stories,'' focuses on "the relations between men and women in their twenties and thirties having difficulty coming together and difficulty breaking apart". Reviewing her novella ''Rapture'' in ''The Atlantic Monthly'', James Marcus wrote, "Sex and the single girl have seldom been absent from Susan Minot's fiction", and Dave Welch at Powells.com identifies one of Minot's themes as "the emotional safeguards within family and romantic relations that hold people apart". Of ''Lust'', Jill Franks wrote that Minot

begins with short, simple sentences, building gradually to longer ones to create the inevitable conclusion: men don't love like women do.

In "Folly", a Bostonian woman of privileged background is involved with two different men as she tries to find equilibrium with her society and family in the era between the world wars. "Evening" is the story of a woman on her deathbed looking back over her life and returning to a wedding weekend 40 years earlier when she fell in love and certain paths in her life were decided. It was nominated for a ''Los Angeles Times'' Nook Award. ''Thirty Girls'' is the story of two women: a Ugandan girl of 15 who has escaped from living two years with armed bandits of the LRA led by

Joseph Kony Joseph Rao Kony (likely born 1961) is a Ugandan militant who founded the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Christian fundamentalist organization, designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Peacekeepers, the European Union and vario ...

, and an American writer, traveling with free spirits on a journalist trip to Uganda to report on the story of the abducted children.

Personal life

Minot married Davis McHenry in 1991. They divorced in 1993. She lived with her second husband, Charles Pingree, from 2000 to 2009. Their daughter Ava Minot Pingree was born in 2001. She lives with her daughter in New York City and on the island of North Haven. Minot has six siblings: Carrie Minot Bell, an artist; Dinah Minot Hubley, a photographer; Eliza Minot Price, a novelist; George Minot, a novelist; Sam Minot, a painter; and Christopher Minot, an artist. She graduated from

Concord Academy Concord Academy (also known as CA), established in 1922, is a coeducational, independent college preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9-12. The school is situated in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1971, Concord Academy became ...

in 1974 and then attended Brown University, where she studied writing and painting. In 1983 she graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts with an M.F.A. in creative writing.

Works

Novels and stories

*''

''. New York: Dutton, 1986. *''Lust & Other Stories.'' New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. *''Folly'' Washington Square Press, 1994. *''Evening.'' New York: Knopf, 1998. *''Rapture.'' New York: Knopf, 2002. *''

Thirty Girls ''Thirty Girls'' is a 2014 novel by American writer Susan Minot. The novel alternates between the perspective of a girl kidnapped by the forces of Joseph Kony and an American woman reporting on the kidnapping. Composition and writing Minot began ...

''. New York: Knopf, 2014. *''Why I Don't Write: And Other Stories''. New York: Knopf, 2020.

Screenplays

*''Stealing Beauty''. With Bernardo Bertolucci. New York: Grove Press, 1996. *''Evening''. With Michael Cunningham. 2007.

Poetry

*''Poems 4 A.M.'' New York: Knopf, 2003.

Plays

*'' The Little Locksmith'' *'' On Island'', an original play, premiered at Islands Theater in North Haven, Maine, August 2, 2018, directed by Lily Thorne.

References

External Links

* https://www.portlandmonthly.com/portmag/2018/07/stage-sight {{DEFAULTSORT:Minot, Susan 1956 births Living people People from Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women novelists Columbia University School of the Arts alumni Prix Femina Étranger winners American women short story writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Novelists from Massachusetts American women poets American women screenwriters New York University faculty Stony Brook University faculty University of Tampa faculty The New Yorker people 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers People from North Haven, Maine Concord Academy alumni Brown University alumni Novelists from Florida Novelists from New York (state) Screenwriters from New York (state) Screenwriters from Massachusetts Screenwriters from Florida Screenwriters from Maine American women academics