Susan Richards Shreve is a prominent writer and English professor of creative writing who founded cultural, literary, and arts foundations and school writing programs. Her work is embedded into myriad aspects of American literary culture,providing deep insights to the American literary scene at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century. She was born in 1939, in Toledo, OH., the daughter of Robert Kenneth Richards (1913-1969), a journalist and Government censor during WWII, and Helen Elizabeth Richards. She received her B.A.(magna cum laude), at the University of Pennsylvania, 1961; and her M.A., at the University of Virginia, 1969. She published her first book, A Fortunate Madness (1974), which marked the beginning of a consistently productive and successful publishing career as the author of both children's literature and adult fiction novels.

Shreve has been a significant participant in the Washington D.C. literary community for more than 40 years,combining her role as a writer with several literary occupations, including co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Writing at George Mason University (1980), and as co-founder, President, and Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, one of the leading literary foundations in the United States. At PEN/Faulkner she created the Writers in Schools program in 1989, which brings published authors and their books into urban schools.

She has also been a Jenny Moore Fellow at George Washington University, a visiting writer at Princeton University, the School of the Arts of Columbia University,Bennington College Summer Seminars, and Goucher College.

Further, her marriage (1987) to the literary agent Timothy Seldes (1927-2015), brought her even deeper into the American literary community. Seldes owned and led the venerable agency Russell & Volkening for 40 years, where his clients included Annie Dillard, Nadine Gordimer, James Lehrer, Peter Taylor, Barbara Tuchman, Anne Tyler, and Eudora Welty.

Shreve's son, Porter Shreve is also a novelist and a writing professor, and the two have co-published two anthologies, Outside the Law: Narratives on Justice in America (1997) and How We Want to Live: Narratives (1998).

As a very young child, Susan Shreve contracted polio and had a two year stay at Warm Springs, GA., (1950-1952), a hospital established by Franklin D. Roosevelt for polio rehabilitation. Shreve describes her experience in an autobiographical memoir, Warm Springs: Traces Of A Childhood At FDR's Polio Haven. In an earlier work of fiction, The Lovely Shoes (2011), Shreve writes that when she was 11 years old, her mother contacted the Italian fashion designer and shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo requesting custom made shoes that would allow her daughter to walk and dance and otherwise participate in life in a normal manner. Ferragamo agreed, and produced custom made shoes for Shreve for years.

Her novel, A Country Of Strangers, about a Black and White family living on the same farm was under option for film, and Daughters Of The New World was an NBC mini series under the title A Will Of Their Own. Shreve was often a guest on the MacNeil Lehrer Newshour on PBS.

Honors and awards include:

Jenny McKean Moore Award, George Washington University, 1978;

Notable Book citation, American Library Association (ALA), 1979, for Family Secrets: Five Very Important Stories;

Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, National Council for Social Studies and the Children's Book Council joint committee, 1980, for Family Secrets: Five Very Important Stories;

Best Book for Young Adults citation, ALA, 1980, for The Masquerade;

PEN/Faulkner writers award.

Guggenheim Fellowship grant in fiction, 1980;

National Endowment for the Arts fiction award, 1982;

Grub Street Award in Non-Fiction

Edgar Allan Poe Award, Mystery Writers of America, 1988, for Lucy Forever and Miss Rosetree, Shrinks for Best Juvenile Novel.

Woodrow Wilson fellowships, West Virginia Wesleyan, 1994, and Bates College, 1997;

Lila Wallace Readers Digest Foundation grant.

Alumni Award at the Sidwell Friends School

Writers for Writers Award from Poets and Writers

Sources: Gerald W. Cloud Rare Books • Manuscripts • Archives

Susan Richards Shreve. Wikipedia. Accessed 5/30/25