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Sue Monk Kidd was born and raised in the tiny town of Sylvester, Georgia, which is tucked among the pinelands and red fields of Southwest Georgia, a place she has lovingly referred to it as “an enduring somewhere.” Her writing has been deeply influenced by place, and she mined her experiences of growing up in Sylvester as she wrote The
Secret Life of Bees, her first novel.
Sue discovered her longing to be a writer when she was a child listening to her father’s imaginative stories. In adolescence, encouraged by English teachers who described her as a “born writer,” she began writing her own stories, as well as keeping prolific journals that chronicled her experiences, both internal and external, a practice she has continued throughout her life. Two
books which she read at the age of fifteen- Thoreau’s spiritual memoir, Walden and Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening- had a deep impact on her and would foreshadow the course she herself would eventually take as a writer: writing spiritual memoir and novels.
Today Sue lives beside a salt marsh near Charleston, South Carolina with her husband Sandy and their black lab, Lily. She writes in a book-lined, upstairs study where she can look out at the tidal creeks and marsh birds. She is at work on a new book. www.suemonkkidd.com
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