The Trustees of Forbes Library will present Susan Stinson with the Twenty-Eighth Annual Trustees Award on Saturday, May 30, 2015 at 2 PM. The event will take place in the Coolidge Museum on the second floor of the library. The program will include brief readings by Susan Stinson, Outgoing Writer in Residence; Diana M. Gordon, First Writer in Residence; and Naila Moreira, Next Writer in Residence followed by a reception. The public is cordially invited to attend the award ceremony.
Each year the Trustees of Forbes Library honor a community member who has given exceptional volunteer service to Forbes Library with the Trustees Award. This year the recipient in Susan Stinson who has served as Writer in Residence at the library for the past five years. She has given countless hours of service in this role developing programming, engaging with writers and readers in our community. She has also served as a spokesperson for the library locally and
nationally through local traditional and social based media outlets.
Susan Stinson’s novels are Venus of Chalk (2004), Fat Girl Dances with Rocks (1994) and Martha Moody (1995). Spider In A Tree was published in Fall 2013 by Small Beer Press. Belly Songs, a collection of poetry and lyric essays, was published in 1993.
Her work — which has appeared in The Public Humanist, The Kenyon Review, The Seneca Review, Curve, Lambda Book Report and The Women’s Review of Books — has received the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Benjamin Franklin Award in Fiction as well as a number of fellowships. She was born in Texas, raised in Colorado, and now lives in Northampton, MA.
Susan was a visiting lecturer at Amherst College for the spring 2014 semester. She has given workshops and been a featured speaker at Dartmouth College, Mt. Holyoke College, University of California/Berkeley, San Diego State University, Wheaton College, Hampshire College, Dickinson College, Canisius College, University of Massachusetts, Yale University and Smith College, as well as conferences such as the National Women’s Studies Association, Nolose,
NAAFA, OutWrite, and Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. In the past, she did a monthly radio segment, Book Swap, with Bob Flaherty on WHMP1400 AM. She also supports other writers as an editor and writing coach.