Susan Stinson - Fat Girl Dances with Rocks

Selected Works

Novels

Martha Moody Twenty-fifth anniversary edition from Small Beer Press!

I can think of no-one who writes with more love, passion, and precision about the pleasures of the body and the pleasures of the soul, and that nebulous intersection of body and soul.-Elizabeth McCracken

Spider In a Tree

Small Beer Press
"Like Jonathan Edwards, Stinson reads the natural world as well as Scripture, searching for meaning. But instead of the portents of an angry god, what she finds there is something numinous, complicated, and radiantly human." -Alison Bechdel

Venus of Chalk

Venus of Chalk is by turns tender and ruthless, dark and funny, haunting and starkly contemporary. In spare, eloquent prose Stinson mines depths most writers shy away from. This is one ride you won't want to miss. -- Alison Smith, author, Name All the Animals. Now available at Book Moon Books!

Or as a new ebook from Small Beer Press

Fat Girl Dances with Rocks

Susan Stinson's first novel is full of big, beautiful language and her main character, Char, is one of the best teenaged heroines I've ever met.-Judith Katz

Misc. Writing

Belly Songs

Poetry and personal essays about fatness. Now available at Book Moon Books!

Novel Excerpts

Three Excerpts from MARTHA MOODY

Link: Lavender Review

Anthology

The Letter Q

Letter to my young, queer self. As seen on The View.

Fat Girl Dances with Rocks

Out of print. Rights available. Published 1994.

Grab the Lapels

New review of Fat Girl Dances With Rock by Melanie Page

The HornBook

17 years after publication, Fat Girl Dances With Rocks is recommended in a prestigious journal for young adult and children's literature in an excellent article about fat characters. I wrote the book for adults and it's never been marketed for young readers, but I'd love it if teenagers found their way to it.

Review:
"[This novel] reads like a good movie with fast paced scenes; crisp language tightly edited for excess and real dialogue. The narrative line rocks with all the smooth rhythm of good back up for the 'very hot' lead characters: seventeen year-old Char and her best high school buddy Felice Ventura...The author Susan Stinson is at her revealing best piling on external detail to create a dizzy, sexy story of female adolescent-teenage desire and discovery." Lambda Book Report, Jyl Lynn Felman

"In this sensual, gently stinging first novel, Susan Stinson's language dreams, drives, and dances, loving the taste of everything it describes in a thoroughly American universe. Char is a character I won't forget, who fills my heart as she begins to take in the immense truth of her own." Joan Larkin

"Susan Stinson's first novel is full of big, beautiful language and her main character, Char, is one of the best teenaged heroines I've ever met. Stinson's writing is music to my ears, and Fat Girl Dances With Rocks makes me want to do the twist!" Judith Katz

"Fat Girl Dances with Rocks is so fresh, so devoid of stereotypes, so one hundred percent original..."
Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Lambda Book Report

"...a fresh and evocative novel."
NAAFA Newsletter

"...an important book" Bay Windows

"...interesting, original, and true"
Valley Women's Voice

"Stinson's prose is full of wonderfully sensuous imagery." Sojourner

"Despite all outward signs, Fat Girl Dances with Rocks, by Susan Stinson, is not just a book about growing up fat...In fact, the success of Stinson's first novel can be credited to her handling of universal themes..."
Tzivia Gover, Metroline

"Fat, 17-year-old Char gropes her way to happiness and self-identity via diets, pop rock, complicated dance moves, and pot while deciding whether she's animal, vegetable or mineral. A bittersweet story of teen love."
Booklist