Randy Susan Meyers

Randy Susan Meyers

The drama of Randy Susan Meyers' internationally bestselling novels is informed by over twenty years working with criminal offenders and families impacted by emotional and physical violence. 

The Widow of Wall Street, described by PW as “An engaging and sharp reflection of the rapid changes in marital dynamics over the course of the 20th century, as well as a cautionary tale about the dangers and allure of ambition in the heyday of Wall Associated Press called the novel “compelling.” Previous novels, The Murderer’s Daughters and Accidents of Marriage were finalists for the Massachusetts Book Awards, who wrote the Massachusetts Council of the Book, who wrote, “The clear and distinctive voice of Randy Susan Meyers will have you enraptured and wanting more.” The Boston Globe called Meyers’ second novel, The Comfort of Lies “Sharp and biting, and sometimes wickedly funny when the author skewers Boston’s class and neighborhood dividing lines, but it has a lot of heart, too.” Choosing Accidents of Marriage as a People “Pick of The Week,” the magazine wrote, “This novel’s unsparing look at emotional abuse and its devastating consequences gives it gravity and bite, while a glimpse into a physically damaged mind both surprises and fascinates.”
 The Murderer’s Daughters, deemed a “Knock-out Debut” by the LA Times was a nationwide Target Book Club pick. Meyers lives in Boston and teaches at Boston’s Grub Street Writers’ Center and at Writer in Progress in Northampton, MA.

Think Piece Tuesday: Books That Shook Me to the Core: Part 2

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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN by Lionel Shriver

“I have a confession to make. For all my raggin on you in those days, I’ve become shamefully dependent on television. In fact, as long am I’m baring all: One evening last month in the middle of Frasier, the tube winked out cold, and I’m afraid that I rather fell apart—banging the set, plugging and unplugging, wiggling knobs. I’m long past weeping over ‘Thursday’ on a regular basis, but I go into a frenzy when I can’t find out how Niles takes the news that Daphne’s going to marry Donnie.”

It amazes me when an author has the guts to walk into the most untenable of situations (a mother unsure of her love for her extremely difficult son, a marriage cleaved by a child—that child committing mass murder) and open our eyes with the smallest of details, the

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Books That Shook Me to the Core: Part 1

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TENDER MERCIES by Rosellen Brown

“Then how peculiar and painful, to walk across the threshold of his own house and to reclaim it from the anonymous care of strangers.”

Anyone knowing me more than a minute knows that Rosellen Brown is one of my favorite writers. Tender Mercies should be a standard for a novel of tragedy told from two perspectives. Published in 1978, it holds up like the finest delicate china.

Laura and Dan’s lives are shattered when an accident rips the marriage and Laura’s body. Brown is able to throw you back and forth between Dan’s wrenching guilt and Laura’s frozen tragedy with astounding emotional close-ups that are almost too painful to read, too brilliant not to—Brown is a writer of unfathomable depth.

I’ve read this book about a dozen times.

CAUCASIA by Danzy Senna

“Before I ever saw myself, I saw my sister. When I was still too small for mirrors, I saw her as the reflection that proved my own

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Advice From My Agent (On Querying Her)

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Want to make a writer shudder? Ask them if they’ve queried yet. Last year I led a workshop on The Great American Query Letter and the participants shuffled in with the reluctance (not to say dread) of women about to try on bathing suits in an open-corral fitting room.

A co-ed one.

But like a job interview, you can’t get around the query. You have to write it. Many times. Because your query won’t be good enough on your first, second, or third draft—this is an iterative process requiring many cranky hours. But if you’re gonna do it, do it right. You’d have to be a damn fool to spend years writing a book and then skimp on the

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