Hudson, Suzanne 1953–

views updated

Hudson, Suzanne 1953–

PERSONAL: Born 1953; married (divorced); children: Hudson Lewis. Education: Attended University of South Alabama, Mobile.

ADDRESSES: Home—Baldwin Co., AL. Agent—c/o Author Mail, MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 155 Sansome St., Ste. 550, San Francisco, CA 94104-3615.

CAREER: Writer and educator. English and literature teacher and guidance counselor with Alabama school system.

AWARDS, HONORS: First prize, National Endowment for the Arts international writing contest, 1977; Hackney Literary Award, Birmingham-Southern College, for short fiction; first place, Penthouse magazine international short-story contest.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

In a Temple of Trees, MacAdam/Cage Publishing (San Francisco, CA), 2003.

In the Dark of the Moon, MacAdam/Cage Publishing (San Francisco, CA), 2005.

SHORT-STORY COLLECTIONS

Opposable Thumbs, Livingston Press at University of West Alabama (Livingston, AL), 2001.

Work represented in anthologies, including Stories from the Blue Moon Café, volumes I, II, and IV, edited by Sonny Brewer, MacAdam/Cage Publishing (San Francisco, CA), 2002–05, and The Alumni Grill, edited by William Gay and Suzanne Kingsbury, MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2004. Short stories published in Penthouse, New Writers, Eastern Shore Quarterly, and Southern Bard.

SIDELIGHTS: Suzanne Hudson's first foray into the world of publishing was short lived. After winning several international short-story awards as an undergraduate in college, she began working with a literary agent to publish her first novel, a work titled Salvation. Intimidated by the momentum of her early success, Hudson retreated from her goal of publication and instead focused on her career as an English teacher and guidance counselor. Twenty-five years after publishing her stories, a college classmate who now worked as an editor for a major publishing firm convinced Hudson to publish a compilation of her short stories. The release of Opposable Thumbs in 2001 led to other opportunities, including contributions to several major anthologies featuring the works of Southern writers. Hudson was soon inspired to explore a longer format, and her first published novel, In a Temple of Trees, was released in 2003.

In a Temple of Trees is loosely based on an incident Hudson remembered from her childhood in Brewton, Alabama, in which a young mother died at the hands of a group of prominent community men at a local hunting camp. In her novel Hudson tells a similar story from the perspective of an African-American boy who witnesses the event and spends his life wracked with guilt that the woman's murderers were never brought to justice. A contributor to Publishers Weekly remarked that "this brutal, eloquent novel takes the old theme of Southern racial conflict and rewrites it in the present, playing out a drama of the damage caused by festering secrets." Booklist reviewer Joanne Wilkinson wrote that the book's "fearless exposure of the virulence of racism and its conflicted protagonist give it a searing complexity" and commended In a Temple of Trees as being "written with raw candor and fierce emotion."

Hudson's second novel, In the Dark of the Moon, also touches on the theme of racism in the Deep South as it follows, over several generations, a family inextricably connected to the execution of an innocent black man. Patrick Sullivan wrote in a review for Library Journal: "This is a splendidly realized novel worthy of Faulkner" that is "Enthusiastically recommended." MostlyFiction.com contributor Jana Kraus commented that "Hudson has created unforgettably powerful characters, whose voices will remain with the reader long after they complete In the Dark Of the Moon" and deemed the novel "compelling fiction from a most talented writer."