Susan Stinson is the author of four novels. She received the Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize from Lambda Literary. Her novels are Spider in a Tree (Small Beer, 2013, historical); Martha Moody (Spinster Ink 95; 20th anniversary edition, Small Beer 2020, Benjamin Franklin award winner, fantastical western); Venus of Chalk (Firebrand Books, 2004, e-book, Small Beer Press, 2022, fat queer road trip; Lambda Literary Award Finalist). Fat Girl Dances with Rocks (Spinsters Ink 94, coming of age); Belly Songs: in celebration of fat women(Orogeny, 93) is a collection of poetry and essays. Her work has appeared in anthologies from Ballantine Books, NYU Press, Scholastic Books, and in many periodicals, including Kenyon Review and Poets & Writers Online. Her essay “Fat Stories” is in The Contemporary Reader for Gender and Fat Studies, ed. Amy Farrell. (Routledge, 2023). Her essay “Slow” is forthcoming in The Portable Feminist Reader, ed. Roxane Gay (Penguin Classics).
A roundtable on Susan Stinson’s body of work was held at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, Fat Studies Track in 2023.
She has taught fiction writing at Amherst and Smith Colleges. She lives in Northampton, where she is writing Lamentation Hill, a speculative historical novel set in 17th century New England with lots of lampreys.