Author, Susanne Davis. This photo shows her with blond curls around a smiling face as she turns to face the camera. She is wearing a soft pale blue button up blouse.

I am Susanne Davis, author of the short story collection, The Appointed Hour (Cornerstone, 2017), and Gravity Hill (Madville Publishing, 2022). It won first-place in the Connecticut Press Club Award (for novel) and second-place in the Blue Moon Novel Competition.

I grew up on a dairy farm in Connecticut, still owned and operated by my family. Farmers are notorious storytellers, and so it seemed natural when one day I started to spin a story to my friends at school that my family would be moving soon. My friends threw a big party for me, with cake and many sweet presents that only adolescent girls can give, including a miniature sailboat in a glass bottle. It was a beautiful party, the only problem was that I wasn’t moving. Not at all. Maybe I’d heard my parents talk about the possibility of moving, because indeed we did move a year later to the farm which serves loosely as the backdrop for Gravity Hill. But the problem was that I had to go back to school in September and face the friends who had given me a heartfelt, teary farewell. What was I to do? I made up a story. At that time, before moving to the dairy farm, my family owned a chicken farm. I hated the chickens and those dark smelly pens so it wasn’t hard the first day of school that September, when my friends saw me get off the bus, to create ANOTHER elaborate story… (also not true)… the chickens had gotten a terrible disease and couldn’t be moved. Luckily no one asked what disease, because I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But that was the moment I decided to write fiction, so that in the words of one famous writer, I might write all my dramatic stories but live a boring life. 

I’ve taught creative writing at colleges, universities, in private workshops. I love the dynamic exchange of the writing and teaching life. I received my MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. My stories and essays are published in American Short Fiction, Notre Dame Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review and numerous other literary journals. (A sampling HERE.)