Up from the Blue (HarperCollins, September 2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Praise for UP FROM THE BLUE:
Susan Henderson’s UP FROM THE BLUE deftly portrays a family with contradictions we can all relate to—it’s beautiful and maddening, hopeful and condemning, simple, yet like a knot that takes a lifetime to untangle. This is a book that you will love completely, even as it hurts you. It is a heartbreaking, rewarding story that still haunts me. I absolutely loved this book…gushingly, unequivocally, loved it.
—Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET
Susan Henderson masterfully weaves a story where family can both indelibly wound, and yet also redeem. Heartbreaking, compelling—ultimately beautiful.
—Samantha Dunn, author of FAITH IN CARLOS GOMEZ
Brilliant! UP FROM THE BLUE felt like a gorgeous gift to my heart. Susan Henderson has a genius for exposing the exquisite flaws and beautiful frailties of her characters with such tenderness the reader can’t help but be uplifted. Yes, it’s that sublime. I fell in love with Tillie, I fell in love with this book. You will, too.
—Ellen Meister, author of THE OTHER LIFE and THE SMART ONE
In UP FROM THE BLUE Susan Henderson delivers a compelling, deeply felt tale about the complexities of family life. You’ll fall in love with young Tillie Harris, whose attempts to navigate her parents’ unruly world are portrayed with genuine warmth and tenderness.
—Michelle Richmond, New York Times bestselling author of THE YEAR OF FOG
A haunting tale of the terrible ways in which we fail each other; of the whys, the what ifs, and the what nows. This is not a book you'll soon forget.
—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
Through her gorgeous, perceptive debut, Susan Henderson reveals the truth--a family's effort to hide its secrets and shame will break a child's heart. UP FROM THE BLUE is an unflinching, emotionally honest novel, one of the most insightful stories I've ever read.
—Ronlyn Domingue, author of THE MERCY OF THIN AIR
A remarkable debut, not just for the uncanny accuracy and charm of eight-year-old Tillie’s narrative voice, but for the way the characters reveal unexpected angles of themselves that make them somehow realer than real. UP FROM THE BLUE lingers in the mind. Susan Henderson shows herself to be a writer of great skill and subtlety.
—Mark Childress, author of CRAZY IN ALABAMA and ONE MISSISSIPPI
UP FROM THE BLUE is a beautiful, haunting, spirited debut, charged with secrets and deep longing. Susan Henderson has written a moving love story, a portrait of that deep lasting love between mother and daughter.
—Julianna Baggott, author of THE MADAM and WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU
UP FROM THE BLUE is a heart-wrenching, tender story with a mystery that kept my pulse racing. What a joy to discover Tillie Harris, the most memorable, charming and plucky narrator in fiction since Scout Finch.
—Jessica Anya Blau, author of Today Show pick, THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES
Haunting and unsettling, UP FROM THE BLUE’s real alchemy is the way it uncovers the stories that alternately save us and keep us from our real truths. Incandescently written, this is a stunning debut with heart.
—Caroline Leavitt, author of GIRLS IN TROUBLE and PICTURES OF YOU
UP FROM THE BLUE is elegant and engrossing. Like a modern-day Scout, Henderson's child narrator Tillie Harris is both tender and tough, charming and filled with wonder by the difficulties she must overcome. Henderson is a talent to watch.
- Danielle Trussoni, author of ANGELOLOGY and FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH (chosen by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2006.)
In this extraordinary first novel, a young girl forced to live within the regimented world of her military father discovers the darkness behind his austere existence. Her secret, nighttime life, spent inside a basement chamber straight out of Jung, conjures the no-man’s-land between madness and sanity. With its authentic and startling imagery, Henderson’s story glimpses the darkness of the heart as well as the rays of light that manage to shine through.
- Kim Ponders, author of THE ART OF UNCONTROLLED FLIGHT and THE LAST BLUE MILE
A luminous debut. Henderson explores the emotional tremors of a troubled military family in a story layered with shock, revelation--and hope.
- Dylan Landis, author of NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T LIVE LIKE THIS
Susan Henderson makes real the magic and terror of childhood with such vivid uncanny accuracy that I can almost imagine being a child again. She takes readers back into the world of children like no other writer today—without cloying sentimentality, and without the wild hysteria of memoir. Funny, smart, innocent, and wicked, her narrator is one of the most memorable voices to show up in fiction in ages.
- Jim Daniels, Pushcart and Brittingham Prize winner, and author of NO PETS, DETROIT TALES, PLACES/EVERYONE, PUNCHING OUT M-80, BLESSING THIS HOUSE, BLUE JESUS, NIGHT WITH DRIVE-BY SHOOTING STARS, LETTERS TO AMERICA: CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY ON RACE
UP FROM THE BLUE is a bejeweled tale of mother and daughter, longing and understanding, all ripe with the antics of a brilliantly imagined girl named Tillie. Dark and sweet like a wild cherry Lifesaver, Henderson’s prose makes our hearts pucker, while enchanting our minds long after the story is done.
- Amy Wallen, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of MOONPIES AND MOVIE STARS
Tillie Harris, Susan Henderson’s courageous young heroine, is vibrant and true. Her voice fills the pages of UP FROM THE BLUE with a bittersweet song of innocence and longing as she navigates her way through her perilous life—a life dominated by her mother’s desperate unhappiness and her father’s frustrations. I wanted to hold Tillie tight then release her with a smile, so I could watch her set the world on fire with her hard-won wisdom and sparkling energy.
- Laura Benedict, author of ISABELLA MOON and CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS
UP FROM THE BLUE is a rare literary page-turner full of shocking discoveries and twists. Susan Henderson has created a remarkable narrator – as memorable for her feistiness as for her tenderness. UP FROM THE BLUE is going to be one of this year's major debuts.
- Josh Kilmer-Purcell, NY Times bestselling author of I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS and THE BUCOLIC PLAGUE
Here, finally, is a contemporary writer willing to embrace the pathos, the ache, the hunger of human life in fiction that's luminous and moving and transformative. In the character of Tillie, Susan Henderson pursues the shadows of childhood without allowing herself to be obliterated by the potential, there, for darkness; her fictional creations are beautifully flawed and hence gorgeously human. For me, Susan Henderson is one of the most important writers to come along since Carson McCullers. Like McCullers, she turns her eye upon the sadness, the poignancy, and the grotesqueries of our world, evokes them with a keen and unswerving vision that is tempered only by understanding and love. A remarkable writer...and a brilliant one.
- Terri Brown-Davidson, assistant editor at Zoetrope: All-Story and author of MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT
Using perfect prose as a weapon, Sue Henderson's UP FROM THE BLUE burrows into you, so that if you put the book down, you will soon feel compelled to pick it back up, and when you have read the final word, you realize that you will carry this story with you for the foreseeable future.
- John Warner, editor of McSweeney's Internet Tendency
I would love to be able to talk about Susan Henderson's book, UP FROM THE BLUE, without using the word "awesome." But the truth is, I can't do it. I'm in awe of the big-hearted love of a daughter for her mother. I'm in awe of the all-too-human Tillie with her brilliant imperfections, with her truth-telling, with her outrageous simplicity. I'm in awe of the breadth and scope of this book. I'm in awe of how Susan Henderson makes it seem as if there's nothing small in the world. I know you'll agree. UP FROM THE BLUE is no less than awesome.
- Terry Bain, O. Henry award-winner and author of YOU ARE A DOG: LIFE THROUGH THE EYES OF MAN'S BEST FRIEND
Susan Henderson deftly conjures that surreal kingdom known as childhood, a realm teeming with tactile mysteries, hourly epiphanies and ineffable longing. Tillie is as brave and winning a narrator as we could wish for, caught in a painful intimacy with her disturbed mother, but also embarking on the necessary adventure of defiance. UP FROM THE BLUE is a wonderful book, always evocative and often funny, fashioned with a delicate touch and a riddler's humor.
- M. Allen Cunningham, author of THE GREEN AGE OF ASHER WITHEROW
Susan Henderson writes with the sort of honesty, clarity, and attention to detail that makes you forget for a moment that you are reading fiction or even reading at all. It is a sign of the greatest level of art: to erase the artifice that separates the reader from the experience. The stories in this book do this with admirable skill, creating a world of vivid sadness and beauty.
- Grant Bailie, author of CLOUD 8
In luminous, economical prose, Susan Henderson tells the story of Tillie, a lonely child in a family of loners, doing her best to please her high-ranking Pentagon scientist father, her literary, unstable mother and her scornful older brother, all of whom have secrets she wants only to understand. She grows before our eyes in deft, layered chapters that are at once painful and funny. Neglected and demanded too much of, eager to please and rebellious in equal measure, Tillie embodies the very spirit of late twentieth-century America, and we can't help but love her. Indeed, Henderson's greatest gift to the reader—and there are many— is the evidence that love, though it surely does not conquer all, makes forgiveness possible and hope inevitable.
- Maryanne Stahl, author of FORGIVE THE MOON and THE OPPOSITE SHORE
SPECIALIZED TRAINING, WORK EXPERIENCE, HONORS
Schooling:
Carnegie Mellon University (B.A.)
Vanderbilt University (M.Ed)
Work:
Upcoming: Guest, NPR's DimeStories
Former managing editor, Night Train literary magazine.
Former writer for ABC News Multi-Media Literacy project.
Former crisis counselor at Pittsburgh Action Against Rape.
Interview, NPR (KRCB):
Listen to my NPR (KRCB) Interview, 2004 about the unique funding strategy used at Night Train literary magazine. (WARNING: this takes a couple of minutes to download; turn the sound up while you wait.)
Story reading, NPR (KRCB):
My Christmas story "The Kid Has a Letter for Santa" was read on National Public Radio (KRCB ) on Dec. 15 as part of a holiday special.
Some Past Readings:
NYC, TBA, for The Nervous Breakdown reading, August 2009.
NYC, Highline Ballroom, for Smith Magazine, McSweeney's, and The Rumpus gather, 2009 - with Stephen Elliott, Amy Tan, and more.
NYC, KGB Bar, for the anthology: Best of Online Writing, The First Ten Years, 2009 - with Kim Chinquee, Anthony Tognazzini, and more.
NYC, KGB Bar, for launch of NPR's DimeStories, 2008 - with Amy Wallen, James Spring, Eber Lambert, Ellen Meister, and more.
Cape Town, South Africa, Off-the-Wall, 2006 - with Liesl Jobson, Ken Barris, Mike Cope.
NYC, The Back Room, 2006 - with Pasha Malla, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Grant Bailie, Jim Nichols, Roy Kesey, Darlin' Neal, Todd Zuniga, Gail Siegel, Kevin Dolgin, Claudia Smith, Lindsay Brandon Hunter.
NYC, Happy Ending bar, 2006 - with Bruce Bauman.
NYC, Happy Ending bar, 2005 - with Todd Zuniga, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Rose Gowen, Jim Ruland, John Leary, Dave Barringer.
Petaluma, CA - Zebulon's Lounge, 2005 - with Michelle Richmond, Bruce Bauman, Dave Fromm, Jordan Rosenfeld NYC - Galapagos Art Space, 2005 - with Felicia Sullivan and Whitney Pastorek
NYC - An Evening with Opium Magazine, 2005 - with Pasha Malla, Todd Zuniga, Mike Sacks, Pia Z. Ehrhardt
NYC - Cornelia Street Cafe, 2004 - with Todd Zuniga
Kings Park, NY, Union Square Tavern, 2004 - with John Warner, John Leary, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Jeff Landon, Terry Bain, Paul A. Toth
PHILADELPHIA - 215 Festival, 2004 - with Michelle Orange, Samantha Hunt, Todd Pruzan, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Jim Hanas, Leonard Pierce, Dan Kennedy
NIGHT TRAIN literary magazine in the NY TIMES
As managing editor of Night Train, and together with marketing manager Tom Jackson, we created a unique way to fund the magazine that received quite a lot of buzz. Here's an excerpt from a half-page article on our work in the NY Times:
KINGS PARK CATCHES THE IMAGINATION OF A LITERARY JOURNAL
By Julia C. Mead
Literary magazines are generally known for their stunning inability to turn a profit. Often proceeding with an optimistic lack of a business plan, their editors drum up just enough financial backing to publish a few times before the journal disappears, appreciated only by a small, rarefied and fickle audience. Then there's Night Train, devoted to keeping alive the waning art of short-story writing through a cunning marketing technique...... My favorite books at the moment: Nicole Krauss, The History of Love, Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son, Tim O`Brien, The Things They Carried, Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow, Jim Daniels, Detroit Tales, Homer (Fagles translation), The Iliad, and Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt.
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