Series 9. Personal and Miscellaneous

This collection contains the papers of Susan Richard Shreve (b. 1939), a prominent American author, a professor of Creative Writing at George Mason University and a co-founder of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation (1985) for which she served as a board member and chairman.

The collection documents her literary and teaching career with manuscripts, typescripts, proofs, journals, correspondence, contracts, clippings, digital files, and other materials related to her authorship and teaching.

Shreve has published fifteen novels, including a memoir "Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood." She has also published thirty books for children, and edited and co-edited five anthologies spanning from 1974-2019. Her writing is described as having “snap and verve” (New York Times) and marks a significant contribution to the genre. As an author of children's books, Shreve has been described as a “master of subtle and wise perception” (Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books). Her writing in general has consistently taken on a broad range of controversial topics, including political ideology (Children of Power, 1979, which tackles McCarthyism and responses to it), terrorism (Plum and Jaggers, 2000); disability (The Lovely Shoes, 2011) and Warm Springs, 2008); perceptions of racial identity (Glimmer, 1997, as “Annie Waters”); suicide, old age, and divorce (Family Secrets, 1979); and unwed parenthood (Loveletters, 1978, a book which was suppressed by its own publisher amid a controversy between writers, reviewers, and educators, with a subsequent debate in the press that Loveletters should be banned in schools). Her books are page-turners with rich character descriptions often likened to Charles Dickens, and filled with dramatic events.

The bulk of the collection represents her writings, including notebooks with manuscript drafts of many of her works and typescripts, many with annotations, including original versions of novels and stories with alternate titles and unpublished works including I Can Touch an Autumn Morning, Wooden And Wicker, In The Center Ring, The Unadoptables, and Geography Of A Marriage.

Also included are book files which are(organized alphabetically by title) and consist of correspondence, clippings, reviews, promotional material, and ephemera such as dustjackets.

The correspondence includes letters from Shreve’s agent, publisher, and editor as well as readers, writers,faculty, other literary agents, journalists, and Washington D.C. residents associated with publishing, writing, and PEN/Faulkner. There are combined personal and professional letters as the author kept these together in her life. There are notable letters from Nicolas Delbanco,Richard Ford, John Irving, Edward P. Jones, Gordon Lish, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O’Brien, Nan Talese, and Anne Tyler.

Also of interest is correspondence with Edward P. Jones when he was a student at the University of Virginia and having doubts about his writing career while studying for an education. There is also a draft of an article by Shreve in regard to the work of Amiri Bakara who received a PEN/Faulkner award. Shreve often included African American and LBGT perspectives in her writing.

The collection includes the business side of literary work as there are more than sixty contracts as well as printed articles and newspaper clippings. The contracts have limited access due to containing personal information.

There are also address books with entries from dozens of writers, editors, publishers, including Saul Bellow, Donald Bartheleme, John Irving, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, Walker Percy, Eudora Welty, etc. and many others.

The Digital files comprise 911 files. These include a combination of files from her professional writing and teaching career between 2000 and 2020. These files represent a wide range of works, including manuscripts of published and unpublished books and professional writings associated with her novels, her teaching, and her role in the literary community.

Sources: Gerald W. Cloud Rare Books • Manuscripts • Archives

Susan Richards Shreve. Wikipedia. Accessed 5/30/25