AUTHOR PROFILE
Suzette D Harrison
Margaret James talks to the bestselling novelist about her multi-faceted creativity
Margaret James
One of the UK publisher Bookouture’s most recent signings is the bestselling African American novelist Suzette D Harrison, whose heartwrenching family saga The Girl at the Back of the Bus is sure to be a hit with British readers.
‘I come from a long line of hardworking people who are also creatives,’ says Suzette, when I ask her to tell me a little about her own family’s background. ‘African Americans have always had to be multi-faceted with many irons in the fire. My great-grandfather was a cook on the railroads, but he also sang in quartets on the weekends. My cousins are musicians, they craft jewellery, create body care products, and make the best gourmet caramel corn. My uncle was a pastry chef, and my grandmother and aunt were phenomenal bakers. We hold down our nine-to-five jobs by day, and we create by night. I recently learned that my Great Aunt Dorothy was a published poet, but I am my family’s first novelist.
‘As a child, I loved writing poems, and several of my pieces were printed in the creative journals of my junior high school and those of the college where I earned my undergraduate degree. I thought poetry was my writing trajectory until I had a lifechanging experience after reading Dr Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was actually the second time I’d read Caged Bird, but this second reading was done at a painful and pivotal period in my life. The power and freedom of Angelou’s beautifully-crafted words delivered me from my pain and also re-routed my focus from poetry to fiction: to literature’s ability to offer divine intervention.