Susan Straight

“More than half of my former students teach - elementary and high school, community college and university. I taught them to be passionate about literature and writing, and to attempt to tran...”

“The American fantasy of love is the 'meet-cute,' 'Love at first sight,' and 'You had me at hello!' The completely spontaneous version of accidental love, which doesn't care about demographic...”

“Teachers spend most of their daytime hours with children. Teachers at every level, coaches, counselors, cafeteria workers and yes, custodians, spend their hours trying to make children's liv...”

“All my best memories of my brother are in vehicles, speeding, predatory or celebratory. We were just made to drive. For the last 12 years of his life, he lived as caretaker of an orange grov...”

“I have more than 100 legal pads filled with handwriting. Eight novels, two books for children, countless stories and essays.”

“The two words, in the American lexicon, are never good. Pink slip. The first time I ever heard it when I was young was when Kaiser Steel handed out pink slips to many of my neighbors and rel...”

“I wrote a story about a man who is orphaned during the 1927 Mississippi River flood in Louisiana, and he's on the banks of levee, and he's starving. And there are other people starving, too....”

“I first drew the attention of my future husband when we were fourteen, on the freshman school bus for an epic field trip from Riverside, Calif. to Los Angeles, where we were taken to the L.A...”

“My brother acquired his first gun when he was very young, from a recently-fled drug dealer's residence. Now, he lived in a rural orange-grove area, and he shot at coyotes who killed his anim...”

“I love seeing America vote, through the prism of my older working class neighborhood in Riverside, California.”