Welcome. I am Eileen Sutton. In my novels and stories, I'm drawn to the collision of race, class, loss, and love. I studied philosophy and English literature at UCLA. I hold a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from New York University where I was mentored by E.L. Doctorow.
Novels
Spanning 80 years, my first novel, Paradise, is a Lower East Side family saga that speaks in tongues—English, Spanish, and Yiddish. The book chronicles the unlikely friendship between two orphans, Jewish and Puerto Rican, separated in age by 60 years. My second novel is also set in New York, inspired by the legendary To Kill a Mockingbird. A chapter from Paradise was a top-ten finalist in the Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Contest, and received an honorable mention from the New Millennium Writings' Fiction Competition.
Stories
My first published story Into The Wind appeared in The Mailer Review, and received an honorable mention from Glimmer Train's Short-Story Award for New Writers. My story Dear Mr. Doctorow, received an honorable mention from the global Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. It also won the 2nd place Bechtel Prize, and appeared in Teachers & Writers Magazine.
Focus
An unrepentant humanist, I love to record the big-and-little joys found in human communities everywhere. For ten years, in partnership with the New York Writers Coalition, I protected free access to the arts by leading workshops for writers from around the world.