About the Author

Susan Breen lives in New York with her husband and children and teaches fiction at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in Manhattan.

Here Susan Breen talks about her inspiration for the book:

"THE FICTION CLASS is based on experiences I had with my mother. Like the character in the book, my mother spent much of her life taking care of my father, who had Multiple Sclerosis. After he died, she developed Parkinson’s Disease and she became quite debilitated and she hoped that I would take care of her, just as she had taken care of my father, but I had four young children and although she did come to live with me for a few years, it was not a happy experience and eventually we were both forced to realize that she needed to go to a nursing home. It was a terrible decision to have to make and we were both angry and bitter about it and my visits to the nursing home were torture, and then I got a job teaching creative writing for Gotham Writers’ Workshop.

I only worked two afternoons a week, but I loved my job and loved hearing all the stories that my students told me and I began to tell my mother these stories and she loved them as well. Sometimes, at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she would ask me to give her the lectures I had given to my class, and I would sit there and declaim about point of view or plotting and over time, these lectures brought us together. The fact was my mother had a writer’s interest in details and people and instead of arguing over our history, we began discussing the ways to put stories together.