Suzanne McConnell

Author, editor, and writing teacher, Suzanne McConnell was a student of Kurt Vonnegut’s at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop when Vonnegut was finishing his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut and McConnell remained friends for the rest of his life. She has published memoirs of him in the Brooklyn Rail on-line and the Writer’s Digest, and led a panel at the 2014 AWP conference titled “Vonnegut’s Legacy: Writing About War and Other Debacles of the Human Condition.” McConnell taught at Hunter College for thirty years and serves as the Fiction Editor of the Bellevue Literary Review. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her fiction won first prize in the New Ohio Review’s 2015 Fiction Contest, first prize in Prime Number Magazine’s 2014 Awards for Flash Fiction, and second prize in So to Speak’s 2008 Fiction Contest. She grew up in San Diego, attended San Diego State College, and began writing while at University of Arkansas earning a BA in Sociology. She lives in New York City and Wellfleet, Massachusetts, with her husband, the artist Gary Kuehn.