About Suzanne
If you have been tapped by the spirit of the word, you have the power to change the world.
About Suzanne Kingsbury, Founder of Gateless Writing
Suzanne Kingsbury is the award-winning author of two critically-acclaimed novels, The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me and The Gospel According to Gracey, both published by Scribner, translated widely abroad and optioned for film by Will Akers and Anne Hathaway.
In 2007 after graduating from Bennington College with a Masters of Fine Arts in Literature and Creative Writing, Suzanne founded Gateless Writing, a nationwide organization based on creative brain science and ancient Zen that supports writers to the point of publication and beyond.
Through salon-style retreats and workshops, one-on-one intensives and career training programs, Suzanne has helped countless writers on their path to signing with top agents, getting acquired by the NY houses, hitting bestseller lists and winning prestigious literary awards.
Her secret sauce is her intuitive “channeling” which divines what the work needs and the highest vision of where the writer can go. In honing these abilities she has trained with the channeler Kristen Carmichael and Michael Harmon’s School of Shamanic Studies. She has also trained in Thai Head Massage and Reiki.
Suzanne is the recipient of a Fulbright Award, an Oxford Town Fiction Award and has been shortlisted for the Robert Olen Butler Award for Short Fiction, the Fog City Writer’s Award and a Dana Award. Her work has been praised by internationally acclaimed authors including Robert Olmstead, Jim Harrison, Jill McCorkle, William Gay and others. Buzz Feed named her first novel a number one best summer read, Publishers Weekly has called her work fast paced and gripping, lush and evocative, The Independent called it Impressive, and Culture Fly has named her one of the most talented writers of our age.
She was the co-editor of the first Alumni Grill Anthology with William Gay and served as the fiction editor for the Bennington Review. Her shorter essays and short stories have been anthologized in At My Grandmother’s Table by Fairview Press, The Blue Moon Cafe Anthology by Macadam and Cage, and Contemporary Vermont Fiction by Green Writer’s Press. Her work has appeared in Glamour magazine, the LA Times, the Huffington Post, People Magazine, The Rolling Stone (European edition) and many other publications.
Five years after Gateless was born, the 2013 Writers’ Guide named her as one of the experts of the creative process.
In her previous life, Suzanne worked at the School for International Training with language and cultural immersion programs in Africa and Asia. She is a certified Laban Technique dance teacher (K-12) and has choreographed for the Bread and Puppet Theater and worked in Jacques D’Ambois’ National Dance Institute in Soho.
Today she splits her time between New York City and southern Connecticut, where she was raised.