The Writer

Susan Russo Anderson

I was born in Evanston, Illinois. After attending Marywood High School for Girls and St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, I received a B.A. in English Literature from Marquette University.

I am a writer, a mother, a grandmother, a widow. I’ve taught language arts and creative writing, worked for a publisher, an airline, an opera company. Traveled. Grew up on the north side of Chicago, but lived most of my adult life in the east. So, like Faulkner’s Dilsey, I’ve seen the best and the worst, the first and the last. I’ve seen worlds blow apart and life turn inside out in less time than it takes to type this sentence. Through it all, and to understand it somewhat, I write.

DEATH OF A SERPENT, the first in the Serafina Florio series, published January 2012. It began as a painting of the Lower East Side and wound up as a mystery story. I just published NO MORE BROTHERS, a novella, the second in the Serafina Florio series and am working on another novel, DEATH IN BAGHERIA.

In between writing, revising and editing, I blog and review books. My reviews can be read at Amazon, LLBook Review, and here.

Favorites

Quote: “Everything that rises must converge.” —Teilard de Chardin, S.J.

Fiction:  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Wolf Hall, The Dead,
The Velveteen Rabbit, The Adventures of Augie March, As I Lay Dying,
Absalom, Absalom!, A Rose for Emily, A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Poem: Four Quartets

Movies: When Harry Met Sally, Raging Bull, Manhattan

Composers: Brahms, Mahler, Puccini, Verdi

Writers: Hilary Mantel, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner
James Joyce, Brendan Behan, Flannery O’Connor, W.B. Yeats, Margaret Atwood
Anita Brookner, Dylan Thomas, Ann Beattie, Anne Tyler, Anne Perry, Saul Bellow
Martha Grimes, Sue Grafton, P.D. James, Richard Russo, Reginald Hill, Val McDermid
Christopher Fowler, Jacqueline Winspear, Jeffrey Deaver , Dennis Lehane, Denise Mina
John Hart, Barbara Cleverly, Tana French, James Wood, T.S. Eliot, Sinclair Lewis
and if I put them all down I’ll never write

Travel Destinations:
Lower East Side, Italy, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria

Photo Credit:
Diane Flynn