Background
Neville, Susan Mae Schaefer was born on January 4, 1951 in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Daughter of John Frederick and Patricia Pointer Schaefer.
( Susan Neville combines a gift for language with a subtl...)
Susan Neville combines a gift for language with a subtle eye and a fine instinct for character. Her characters—and her settings—are, most of them, midwestern. There is the staunchly midwestern wife in the story "Kentucky People," for instance. She was born in this house in this Indiana town, a world far removed from people like Mrs. Lovelace, next door, transient people "who have followed the industrial revolution from Kentucky to Indiana and most of whom are now in Texas." Nothing really out of the way has ever happened to her. Now she "shivers with excitement" when she is called upon to help Mrs. Lovelace throw her husband out—helps her haul all of his belongings out onto the porch: underwear, shoes, whiskey bottles, rolltop desk, even "wedding presents from his side of the family." The collection moves from the playful tone of "Johnny Appleseed," in which the author takes an old fecundity myth and does something different with it, to the wise and poignant story of an elderly woman attending a family gathering at which she recognizes the separateness from her children and grandchildren that the cancer within her has given her. It has been months since any one of them has kissed her on the mouth. There are so many things that she would like to tell them, "but they don't want to talk about it, each one of them positive that he is the one human being in the history of the earth who will never ever die." All of the stories in this unusual first collection stick in the reader's mind long after he has read them.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820337056/?tag=2022091-20
( "Neville’s observations on inner and outer worlds deser...)
"Neville’s observations on inner and outer worlds deserve a large readership." ―Studies in Short Fiction "Blending fictional and reportorial technique, Ms. Neville unwinds a tapestry of the Indiana seasons... in scene after remarkable scene she succeeds in disturbing and undermining one’s calm.... moving... " ―Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times "... shrewedly perceptive studies of the poetics of place... Neville pierces the heart of this ‘heart of the country,’ unloosing disquieting images and poignant scenes that cling to your memory."―Belles Lettres "If there is darkness in this vision there is also compassion, a lucid and inclusive civility born of remembering how fragile are the houses of our lives." ―Arts Indiana "A collection of essays, works of fiction and blends of those two genres, Indiana Winter is a poetic and disturbing interpretation of phenomena familiar to most of Neville’s fellow Hoosiers―so familiar, in fact, that we may not really see them.... As a plunge into the blackness and glare of the examined life, Indiana Winter is a testament to courage." ―Dan Carpenter, Indianapolis Star "These stories and essays are filled with great emotion and affection for the people and the land we’ve come to know as the Hoosier state." ―Minneapolis Star Tribune "... a book that is firmly and honestly rooted in region, yet finds in its careful and lyrical examination of Indiana’s people and places truths that move the prose pieces away from simple regionalism." ―Sycamore Review A sensitive writer's imaginative essay-stories about spiritual boundaries and values in the state of Indiana and everywhere.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0253208793/?tag=2022091-20
(A collection of short stories by Susan Neville. The house...)
A collection of short stories by Susan Neville. The house referred to in the title is a specific place in midwestern American folklore, but the blue also refers to the blue of the globe as seen from space and the blue lights that flicker behind closed eyelids in the house of the imagination.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0268011842/?tag=2022091-20
Neville, Susan Mae Schaefer was born on January 4, 1951 in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Daughter of John Frederick and Patricia Pointer Schaefer.
Bachelor, DePauw University, 1973. Master of Fine Arts, Bowling Green State University, 1976.
Assistant professor Indiana University East, Richmond, 1977-1983. Professor Butler University, Indianapolis, since 1983, Demia Butler chair English, 1994. Member faculty Warren Wilson Master of Fine Arts Program, Ashville, North Carolina, since 1995.
( Susan Neville combines a gift for language with a subtl...)
( "Neville’s observations on inner and outer worlds deser...)
(A collection of short stories by Susan Neville. The house...)
Author: Invention of Flight, 1983 (Flannery O'Connor award University Georgia Press), Indiana Winter, 1993, In the House of Blue Lights, 1998 (Richard Sullivan prize Notre Dame University press), Twilight in Arcadia, Fabrication: Essays on Making Things and Making Meaning, Iconography: A Writer's Meditation. Editor: Falling Toward Grace, 1998.
Married Kenneth G. Neville, May 19, 1973. Children: Steven, Laura.