Suzanne Strempek Shea

Suzanne Strempek Shea has written six novels and six works of nonfiction. Her freelance journalism and fiction have appeared in magazines and newspapers including Yankee, The Bark, Golf World, The Boston Globe, The Irish Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Brevity, Down East, Chautauqua, Solstice, Organic Style and ESPN the Magazine. Awards for her books include the New England Book Award and the Oskar Halecki Prize. Her journalism was shortlisted for the Penney-Missouri Awards, and her creative writing was recognized in Best American Fiction.

Suzanne’s career as a writer began with reporting for newspapers, beginning with the Springfield (Massachusetts) Newspapers, going on to The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal and ending in Springfield when her career as an author took off with the first of five novels. Set in her native Polish America, the books were featured in national and international media including twice on NBC’s Today; on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, NPR and Voice of America; and in major newspapers and magazines in both the United States and Poland.

She taught fiction and nonfiction at the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing for 18 years and for 12 years was inaugural Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Mass., where she created the university’s MFA program in nonfiction. She also was on the faculty of the MFA programs at Emerson College and the University of South Florida.

Suzanne co-directs the annual Dingle Writers’ Workshop in Dingle, Ireland, and the annual Iota Short Forms Writing Conference on the easternmost coast of Maine. She’s married to lifelong journalist Tommy Shea, to whom, as a high school junior, she wrote a letter of complaint when his coverage of high school hockey failed to include the team she was covering in her first newspaper beat as a freelancer for The Palmer (Massachusetts) Journal and Monson Register. They live in Bondsville, Massachusetts, and Howth, Ireland.