Susan Cheever
Susan Cheever (born July 31, 1943) is an American author and a prize-winning best-selling writer well known for her memoir, her writing about alcoholism, and her intimate understanding of American history. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award. She currently teaches in the MFA program at The New School in New York City.
Susan Cheever | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Susan Cheever July 31, 1943 |
| Occupation | Writer: memoirist |
| Genre | nonfiction, memoir |
| Notable works |
|
Susan Cheever (born July 31, 1943) is an American author[1] and a prize-winning best-selling writer well known for her memoir, her writing about alcoholism, and her intimate understanding of American history. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award. She currently teaches in the MFA program at The New School in New York City.
Biography
[edit]Cheever is the daughter of novelist John Cheever and poet/teacher Mary Cheever.[2] She has two brothers, Benjamin Cheever and the late Federico Cheever.[3] Cheever has been married three times and divorced twice.[4] Cheever married Robert Cowley, the son of Malcolm Cowley, in 1967. The couple divorced 8 years later.[5] Cheever's second husband was Calvin Tomkins, II, whom she married in 1981. Cheever and Tomkins have a daughter Sarah.[6] Cheever married her third husband, Warren James Hinckle III, in 1989.[7] Cheever and Hinckle have a son, Warren Hinckle IV, who was born in November 1989.[7][8]
Career
[edit]Cheever's 2025 book, When All the Men Wore Hats (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), investigates the roots of her father's stories, the relationship between truth and fiction, and the secret lives that lie behind the page. Advance reviews have called it "an eloquent and fully immersive portrait of a renowned author"[9] and "remarkable... sui generis... [an] illuminating book."[10]
Cheever's book Drinking in America: Our Secret History was published in 2015. The book chronicles how alcohol has influenced the history of the United States.[11] Her other books include My Name is Bill - Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, a biography of Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson; Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, novelist John Cheever; Treetops: A Memoir; and five novels: Looking for Work, A Handsome Man, The Cage, Doctors and Women, and Elizabeth Cole. Her essay "Baby Battle," in which she describes immersion in early motherhood and subsequent phases of letting go of her primary identity as a mother, was included in the 2006 anthology Mommy Wars by Leslie Morgan Steiner. Her most recent biography, E.E. Cummings: A Life was reviewed in The New York Times,[12] The New Yorker,[13] and was selected as one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist ("With boundless new detail gathered through meticulous research, Susan Cheever succeeds where most other biographers have failed....")[14] and The San Francisco Chronicle.[15]
Cheever is the author of American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work, published in December 2006. Cheever was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1983. She graduated from Brown University in 1965 and studied American Literature at New York University. She is also a member of the Corporation of Yaddo and serves on the Author's Guild Council. In addition to working on her books, she teaches in the Bennington College M.F.A. program and at The New School.
Cheever is the author of Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction, which was published in 2008.[4]
Awards and honors
[edit] |
- 1985 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Home Before Dark
- 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award, Nominee
- 1996 The Michael Q. Ford Journalism Award for her Newsday columns , Cheever was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team
- 2017 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Long-listed for Nonfiction Prize
Bibliography
[edit]- Looking For Work (1979)
- A Handsome Man (1981)
- The Cage (1982)
- Home Before Dark (1984)
- Doctors & Women (1987)
- Elizabeth Cole (1989)
- Treetops: A Memoir About Raising Wonderful Children in an Imperfect World (1991)
- A Woman's Life: The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extroardinary Generation (1994)
- Jrnls John Cheever #1 (1995)
- Note Found in a Bottle (1999)
- My Name is Bill: Bill Wilson-- His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (2004)
- American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau - Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work (2006)
- Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction (2008)
- Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (2010)
- E.E. Cummings: A Life (2014)
- Drinking in America: Our Secret History (2016)
- When All the Men Wore Hats (2025)
References
[edit]- ^ "Susan Cheever". PBS. Archived from the original on January 26, 2012. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
- ^ "Mary Cheever, a Central Figure in a Literary Family, Dies at 95". New York Times. April 9, 2014.
- ^ "Frederico Cheever obituary".
- ^ a b "A Writer Alone at Last". New York Times. October 24, 2008. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
- ^ Smilgis, Martha (February 4, 1980). "The Daughter Also Rises: Susan Cheever Writes a Novel That Makes Father John Proud". People. Archived from the original on May 5, 2014. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
- ^ Hodgman, Ann (June 10, 2001). "Quality Time". New York Times. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
- ^ a b Mitford, Jessica (October 4, 1992). "Standing and delivery: From total immersion to drug cocktails, from birthing stools to the 'Empathy Belly', there are more fashions in childbirth than in hemlines". The Independent. Archived from the original on September 23, 2009. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
- ^ Boulware, Jack (February 14, 1996). "Hinckle, Hinckle, Little Star (Part II)". San Francisco Weekly. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
- ^ WHEN ALL THE MEN WORE HATS | Kirkus Reviews.
- ^ Gilbert, Ellen (August 1, 2025). "When All the Men Wore Hats: Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever".
- ^ Italie, Leanne (October 14, 2015). "Susan Cheever chronicles drinking in America in new book". Seattle Times. Associated Press. Retrieved October 16, 2015.
- ^ Fried, Daisy (April 18, 2014). "Lives of the Poets". The New York Times. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ "Paul Muldoon -- Charles Wright In The New Yorker". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ "Books of the Year". The Economist. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
- ^ "Best of 2014". sfgate.com. December 24, 2014. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
External links
[edit]
- Susan Cheever official website
- Column archive at The Daily Beast
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Susan Cheever collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave includes "Alma Mater", an essay by Susan Cheever (2007)
- The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal includes "In Praise of Married Men," an essay by Susan Cheever (2007)
