Susan Coll

susan coll
Book Review
The Washington Post
‘Where’d You Go, Bernadette’ by Maria Semple

The assignment: Craft a novel from the literary equivalent of found objects. Consider the narrative possibilities contained not just in letters and e-mails, but in school report cards, emergency room bills and police reports filed by night managers at Westin Hotels. The resultant work must have a compelling plot, a strong sense of place and fully realized characters. Make it warm, dark, sad, funny — and a little bit screwball.

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Opinion Editorial
The Washington Post
Susan Coll works at Politics & Prose Bookstore and would like to emphasize that this essay should be shelved under fiction. Her novel, "The Stager," will be published in July.
The Atlantic
The rules of shelving can seem arbitrary, even arcane, but the fundamentals are easy to learn: two hard covers, and no more than three paperbacks of the same title, on each shelf.  The exception is the face-out. If the jacket is displayed horizontally, behind it you can stack as many books as can fit.
Essay
LitHub
I had always dreamed of a job that engaged in some aspect of the business of books. Although I was writing novels and taking on freelance work—for a time I became the queen of the 800-word feature story for a couple of international newspapers, accepting any assignment that came along, from writing about children’s birthday parties to the black market economy in India—I had not had a steady paycheck since my twenties.
susan coll
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