Susan Shapiro Barash

Susannah Marren is the author of Between the Tides and A Palm Beach Wife and a pseudonym for Susan Shapiro Barash, who has written more than a dozen nonfiction books including Tripping the Prom Queen and Toxic Friends.

She lives in New York City and teaches gender studies in the Writing Department at Marymount Manhattan College.

Recently I asked Barash about what she was reading. Her reply:

I'm happiest when I read a few books at the same time. For fiction my style is to read a classic at the same time that I'm reading new fiction.I've just read Liane Moriarty's Nine Perfect Strangers concurrently with Anthony Trollope's Dr. Thorne and I'm about to begin Drawing Home by Jamie Brenner and at the same time will re-read Summer by Edith Wharton. Now that we are approaching summer, I love 'summer reads' and so I'll read Elin Hilderbrand's new novel, Summer of '69 and Mary Kay Andrews' Sunset Beach. I'll juxtapose these with The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe which I've always wanted to read and The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot -- a book I've not finished - which is unlike me.

Because nonfiction and poetry mean so much to me, I keep a stack of both near my bedside. I am almost finished with Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher and re-reading Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There is a book that I've used in my classes at Marymount Manhattan College, where I teach in the writing department and my topic is gender. The title is Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and was published in 1861. Once a summer I read poetry by W. H. Auden, Emily Dickinson and Galway Kinnell. I recently read Megan Marshall's Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast.

Visit Susan Shapiro Barash's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Palm Beach Wife.

The Page 69 Test: A Palm Beach Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue