A stunning, passionate book on the aftermath of war... Elizabeth Baines, Reviewer

Dear Reader,Welcome to my website. I'm thrilled to be able to reach out to so many interested readers in this way and to acquaint you all with my work. As often as I can, I will use it to keep in touch with all of you, to let you in on the ups and downs of my life as a writer. Cruise around the links.Click on my books to buy them. Contact me if you wish. And thanks for stopping by.Sue

Sue Guiney

Author

Sue Guiney was born Sue Rappaport in 1955, 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 her family), a movie theater and a bank. She was the middle of three girls, and had a now sadly unusual childhood surrounded by the attention of two loving parents and four doting grandparents. If asked, she would probably say that it was the good luck of having all four grandparents in her life thoughout her childhood that gave her that love of storytelling and appreciation for language which helped create the writer she is today.Sue started writing when she was eight. Her first work was a play, adapted from a novel (now lost in the midst of memory), that was performed by her third grade class. From then on she wrote short stories, poems, articles, research papers, anything that allowed her to play with language and communicate her thoughts via words on a page. Her work today reflects this easy jumping between genres. Sue has always believed that you start with a character or a story or a thought, and the form follows organically. In other words, a poem is a poem because it couldn't be anything else. A novel is a novel because it insists on being one.After graduating from an enormous suburban public high school, Sue received her B.A. in English and Classics from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Throughout her time there, she studied with the English poet and playwright, Tony Connor. Her desire to study Classics, and specifically Greek, grew out of her desire to write and understand plays. To this day, she says that the only thing harder for her than learning to read Greek was getting her first novel published (not written, published!). At the same time, she also pursued her other life-long passion, music. Sue has played the violin since she was five years old, and has always been a part of an orchestra or ensemble wherever she's gone. Presently, and for the past twelve years, she has been a member of the Kensington Philharmonic, a semi-professional orchestra in London which performs three times a year. Many people have known Sue for years without knowing that she plays the violin and spends every Monday night rehearsing. Perhaps it shows just how much a part of her music is. When people complain, "Why didn't you tell us you play the violin?" she usually responds, "Well, I never think about it. It's just something I do, like brushing my teeth."Sue's interest in Classics led her to earn her M.A. degree from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she studied with Professor Kenneth Reckford. Her Master's thesis was a study of Euripides' last play and called "Iphigenia in Aulis From Innocence to Nobility." It was in North Carolina that she also discovered two other passions. One is her love of teaching, which she continues to do in many forms today (see Workshops). The other, and more importantly, is her love of Don, a fellow Classicist and later lawyer who has been her husband for well over twenty years. The rest of her story is really a journey of their life together.After graduate school, Sue and Don moved to New York where Don attended Columbia Law School. Sue stared a career in fundraising, first for The Acting Company and then for Columbia University. For a while, her creative life seemed to have been put on hold. But not really. In 1984 she gave birth to their son, Alexander. Soon after his birth, the three of them moved to Boston where they remained for six years. Sue was now a part-time at-home mom, while she also continued to work as a fundraiser for various educational and health-related institutions within Boston. She continued to play the violin with various amateur orchestras, as well. Her writing went "underground," secret poems and short stories, never to be shown, hastily scribbled between feedings and diaper changes. Not an unusual tale. Things changed, though, when she sought a way to turn a tragedy into something positive.In 1987, Sue gave birth to their second son, Sam. He died in his sleep five weeks later, a victim of the little-understood syndrome known as Crib (or Cot) death. This senseless loss became a part of who she is, what she believes, and, over time, led her to find the courage to bring her writing into the world, as if, somehow, a lifetime dedicated to the creative act would "make it up to him."Understandably, these were very difficult years, but they led to a change which was both unimagined and defining. In 1990, Sue, Don and Alex moved to London, England. They have remained there ever since. Although America is in their blood, England has become their home. It is where Sue and Don have lived their adult lives, created their home and, most importantly of all, gave birth to their youngest son, Noah. A wife, husband and two sons -- a tidy family unit which has sustained Sue and given her the support and foundation to pursue the creative life she had dreamt about back when she was eight years old.Sue has now lived in England for nearing twenty years. She keeps a foothold in her native country by spending as much time as possible in their "country house" on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. She uses her home there to nourish the part of her that sometimes gets lost within the frantic pace of an urban lifestyle. But Sue believes hers is not an "ex-pat" life. London is Sue's adopted home, England her adopted country, and this can be clearly heard in her Anglo-American voice and sensibility.

Books

Books

A Clash of Innocents a-clash-of-innocents_09,11.jpg

A Clash of Innocents

Sue's latest novel, A Clash of Innocents, was published in 2010 by Ward Wood. Its not supposed to be cold in February, not in Phnom Penh. Deborah, a 60-year-old American expat, is on her way back to the Khmer Home for Blessed Children which she has run for ten years. A young woman in her twenties is waiting for her. Another American, but with flip flops and a backpack, she asks, Are you Deborah Young? Im here to help. So begins a story of hidden identities and questioned motives. Who is this young woman? Who is Deborah? Who are any of the displaced Westerners who find themselves raising the leftover children of Cambodias violent past? Against her better judgment and building suspicions, Deborah allows the young woman, Amanda, to stay, but when a sick infant is left on their doorstep, the horror of the young womans past catches up with her and infiltrates the orderly workings of Deborahs home. The precarious well being of Deborahs family of forty forgotten Khmer children is jeopardized, as is her own emotional life. Against the backdrop of Cambodia's violent past and the beginnings of its new Tribunal for justice, a story of displaced souls unfolds. In Cambodia, innocents are everywhere. Everyone is innocent, or so they would like to believe everyone, except the few who, for their own private reasons, take on the guilt of the many.

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A Clash of Innocents Returns to Cambodia

Tangled Roots

Sue's first novel is a story about the interconnection of two people's lives, a son and his mother, and the difference between their perceptions of what "really happened." First we meet John, a forty-year old cosmologist and professor of Theoretical Physics. He is at a turning point in his life, an "event horizon," where he finds himself lost and angry -- with himself, with his now dead mother, and with a God whom he believes clearly does not exist. Yet, despite his own refusal to examine himself and his past, unseen forces lead him far from home to a point in "space-time" where he is both set free and reconnected. Woven into John's journey is the history of his mother, Grace. Her life is revealed through stories told in her own voice, stories which unfold her progression from youthful joys and frustrations to adult tragedies, and then beyond to a personal discovery of peace which she shares with a world outside her apartment window and far beyond her own family. In Tangled Roots, two voices interweave to reveal their personal journeys and express the often unknown, yet undeniable influences that one life will have on another....an engrossing story and thought-provoking meditation. An outstanding debut - Bookersatz

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Sue Guiney - Tangled Roots

Her Life Collected

Sue's latest poetry collection, Her Life Collected, is published by Ward Wood Publishing, February 2011:Maiden, woman, crone three traditional stages in the female lifespan. In Her Life Collected, these stages are re-envisioned for a modern time, examining through poetry the feminine response to love, betrayal, motherhood, art, loss and gain as it changes throughout the decades of an imagined life.'Sue Guiney's poems evoke scenes from an Audrey Hepburn movie, an American teen movie, and a movie based on a novel by Anita Brookner. In bright images and scenarios she presents us with a life fully observed in the passage of time, unsparingly honest and very engaging.'- Katy Evans-BushSue's first collection is a poetry play, published by Bluechrome Publishing, and called Dreams of May. Dreams of May is that rarity, a poetry play. Featuring 22 poems for a single voice, it describes a journey that starts on a train and travels throughout a tumultuous range of emotions before finding a peace in dreams. Its images have stayed with me for weeks following a single reading. - Gold Dust MagazineSue's work can also be found in such journals as Acumen, Envoi, North American Review, South, Aethlon, Dream Catcher, Genius Floored and

News

MAR 6 2012 Symposium _ SOAS, London - Art for Social ChangeNOV 12 2011 Interview on BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage. Sue was interviewed by John McCarthy. You can listen again by clicking here: OCT 2011 Book signing tour of East Coast, USA.OCT 14 2011 Book signing at GROLIER Bookshop _ 3pm

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