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Ellen Sussman

Biography

Ellen Sussman

Ellen Sussman is the author of four national bestselling novels: A WEDDING IN PROVENCE, THE PARADISE GUEST HOUSE, FRENCH LESSONS and ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS. All four books have been translated into many languages, and FRENCH LESSONS has been optioned by Unique Features to be made into a movie. Ellen is also the editor of two critically acclaimed anthologies: DIRTY WORDS: A Literary Encyclopedia Of Sex and BAD GIRLS: 26 Writers Misbehave. She was named a San Francisco Library Laureate in 2004 and in 2009. Ellen has been awarded fellowships from The Sewanee Writers Conference, The Napoule Art Foundation, Hedgebrook, Brush Creek, Ledig House, Ucross, Ragdale Foundation, Writers at Work, Wesleyan Writers Conference and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has taught at Pepperdine, UCLA and Rutgers University. Ellen now teaches through Stanford Continuing Studies and in private classes out of her home. She has two daughters and lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ellen was born in Trenton, NJ and has lived in Boston, Philly, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Paris and Northern California. She has worked lots of jobs including tennis instructor, restaurant manager, and college teacher but through all the transmutations of her life she has been writing, since the age of six, stubbornly, persistently, with great cockiness and wild insecurity, through praise and piles of rejection letters. She has given up her writing career many times, but only for a day or two, and her family has now learned to ignore her new career choices. She is a writer, an almost daily writer, a writer who actually loves to write.

Ellen Sussman

Books by Ellen Sussman

by Ellen Sussman - Fiction

Olivia and Brody have chosen the perfect location for their destination wedding: a friend’s idyllic inn in the Mediterranean town of Cassis. However, the weekend is quickly thrown off balance by guests. Olivia’s daughters, one reckless and one practical, both make brash decisions. Brody’s mother is coping with the fallout of her own marriage, and then there is Jake, the playboy best man. In the middle is Olivia, navigating the dramas and joys of starting a new life.

by Ellen Sussman - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Returning to the scene of the terrorist bombing that she lived through in Bali one year previously, adventure travel guide Jamie faces down her negative memories of the past and creates positive new experiences that lead her to a hopeful new future.

by Ellen Sussman - Fiction

A single day in Paris changes the lives of three Americans as they each set off to explore the city with a French tutor, learning about language, love and loss as their lives intersect in surprising ways.