About Susie
Susie Nadler was born and raised in San Francisco, where she still lives with her husband and their teenage twins. As a school librarian, she gets to spend most of her time doing the best possible things: reading and talking to kids about books. She has an MFA from the University of Montana and was a Brown Handler writer-in-residence at the San Francisco Public Library. She is represented by Molly Ker Hawn at David Higham Associates.
Some random stuff about ME
I’ve had a lot of jobs: recipe tester, fact checker, bookseller, comp teacher, copy editor, food blogger, wedding florist, to name a few. The wedding florist thing was a huge chunk of my life and feels like a million years ago. It gave me great fodder for writing. So much family drama!
Until a few years ago, I thought I hated audiobooks. No clue where I got that idea, but I refused to try them until forced to do so for a class in library school. Now they’re my number one way to relax. It brings back the feeling of being read to as a child. So soothing! Mostly I listen to British detective novels; I can’t read physical mysteries, because I’m the worst about flipping ahead to spoil the ending.
Picture books are my favorite art form. Some treasures: Amos and Boris by William Steig; Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel; The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown; Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold; Escargot by Dashka Slater; Paul Meets Bernadette by Rosy Lamb; Dreamers by Yuyi Morales.
Beloved is a book that changed my life. We were reading three of Toni Morrison’s books for a high school class, because I was lucky and got an amazing teacher. Morrison’s prose felt like magic to me. That book made me think in a totally different way about language and storytelling. Too bad it was the nineties, because I was really into gelly roll pens at the time, so my original copy is all marked up in pink.
I love the Muppets to an unreasonable degree. Our world would be a better place if the original Muppet Movie were required viewing for all humans in positions of power.
Other things I love: the ocean, the redwoods, movie popcorn, soft pretzels, my dog (oh, did I already mention her?). Things I hate: cantaloupe, book banning.
A quote I’m currently thinking about a lot, from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: “All flourishing is mutual.” Another book that should be required. Could all people please read Robin Wall Kimmerer and watch the Muppets?
I bake. I once made a shockingly accurate cake representation of our beloved whippet’s head for my kids’ birthday. It was my proudest creation (except maybe kids themselves — oh, and book).
Q&A with susie
Lies We Tell About the Stars has been living in my heart for years, drawing on my memories of growing up in San Francisco and experiencing the 1989 earthquake as a kid. Here are some questions I've been getting about the book and the writing process. Would love to answer more—send me yours!
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Partly it’s inspired by my own experience of the 1989 earthquake when I was growing up here in SF. The scale of that quake was much smaller, but it was formative for me, and I've always wanted to write about it in some way. I remember that we kids all felt so shaken (pun totally intended), because we lived in this place that sometimes seemed magical and picture-perfect, and actually it was really fragile underneath. At the time I was dealing with some difficult family stuff, too—my dad was very sick—and it all felt like layers of instability, things falling apart all at the same time. So the seed of the book came from that, from wanting to write a San Francisco book that draws on my memories and feelings from that time.
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I'm honestly excited to talk about whatever readers really connect with in the book— since I'm a librarian, talking about books with young people is my favorite thing. But if I had to choose, I'd say I'm excited to talk about the Mars mission and how that part of the story unfolds, and also about Celeste's journey as a character, how she finds her way to some kind of understanding of herself by picking up the pieces of the life she and Nicky shared. Oh, and the romance, and how fun that was to write!
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Usually at the kitchen table! But I got very, very lucky a bunch of years ago and got awarded the Brown Handler Residency at Friends of the SF Public Library. The amazing Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler funded this residency for writers to work for a full year in a quiet studio in the Friends of SFPL offices. I wrote the first draft while I was working with those lovely people and hanging out with the other writers. It was magical!
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Impossible! I’m not good at ranking things. But okay, here are a few that I love. I’ll Give you the Sun by Jandy Nelson; The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo; The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta; Looking for Alaska by John Green; The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
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Again, that’s like asking me to rank my kids. But sure, okay, here are some faves: Blue Heron Lake in Golden Gate Park; the wave organ (IYKYK); Ocean Beach around like Quintara/Rivera streets; Sutro forest; Clement Street in the inner Richmond for dim sum.
Events & Readings