Photo © Helen Peppe Photography
Suzanne Strempek Shea’s twelve books include novels, memoirs, two biographies and an anthology.
Her novels are Selling the Lite of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Lily of the Valley, Around Again, and Becoming Finola, all published by Washington Square Press, and Make a Wish But Not for Money, published by PFP.
Her memoirs are Songs From a Lead-lined Room: Notes – High and Low – From My Journey Through Breast Cancer and Radiation; Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures From a Year in a Bookstore; and Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith, all published by Beacon Press.
Suzanne’s other nonfiction books are:
140 Years of Providential Care: The Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, Massachusetts, which weaves the order’s history with interviews, written with her husband, Tom Shea, and with author/historian Michele P. Barker.
This is Paradise: An Irish Mother’s Grief, an African Village’s Plight and the Medical Clinic That Brought Fresh Hope to Both (PFP), the story of Irishwoman Mags Riordan, founder of the Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic in the African nation of Malawi.
The essay collection Soap Opera Confidential: Writers and Soap Insiders on Why We’ll Tune in Tomorrow As the World Turns Restlessly by the Guiding Light of Our Lives (McFarland), co-edited with Elizabeth Searle.
Winner of the 2000 New England Book Award, which recognizes a literary body of work’s contribution to the region, Suzanne began writing fiction in her spare time while working as reporter for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Newspapers and The Providence Journal.
Her freelance journalism and fiction has appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Irish Times, Yankee, Golf World, Down East, The Bark, Organic Style and ESPN the Magazine. She was a regular contributor to Obit magazine.
Suzanne is a member of the faculty at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing and is writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Mass. She has taught in the MFA program at Emerson College and in the creative writing program at the University of South Florida. She also has taught in Ireland, at Annie Deppe and Ted Deppe’s Curlew Writers Conferences in Howth and Dingle, and in Dingle via the Stonecoast Ireland residency. She leads the annual summer writing seminar in Dingle offered through Bay Path University’s MFA program in nonfiction.
Suzanne lives in Western Massachusetts with Tommy Shea and their dog, Otis. Tommy was a longtime former reporter and columnist for the Springfield (Mass.) Newspapers and most recently was senior foreign editor at The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, The United Arab Emirates. Tommy has taught journalism and other aspects of media and communications at Springfield, Elms and Holyoke Community Colleges, and at Bay Path University. He is a member of the faculty at Bay Path University’s MFA program in nonfiction. His most recent book is Dingers: The 101 Most Memorable Hits in Baseball History (Sports Publishing), co-written with Joshua Shifrin.
More on Suzanne
The Invention of Ethnicity and Gender in Suzanne Strempek Shea’s Fiction
The Polish Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 3, 2003: 327-345
Grazyna J. Kozaczka
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Suzanne Strempek Shea 
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