Crowning the Queen of Love

Harkens back to the Greek vision of romantic love—a dangerous disordering of the senses.

Crowning the Queen of Love lays bare the intense moments when, enthralled by passion, we find ourselves dangerously lost. In these stories of sexual and romantic adventure, women learn to turn vulnerability and passivity into self-awareness. Entering a new and vital imaginative realm, attempting to find acceptance and intimacy, they break through stereotypes, personal barriers, and false beliefs. Sometimes when Eros finds them, the moon, sun, and stars fall on their dreams. Confronted by life’s harshness, these women discover within themselves unsuspected gifts for transformation.

Publication date: April 1, 1997

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5 x 7.5

Page count: 128 pages

ISBN: 9781566890588

Susan Rickel Welch was the author of Crowning the Queen of Love, published by Coffee House Press in 1997. She studied journalism at the University of Iowa and Stanford University, where she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow, and held master’s degrees in English and creative writing. Welch received a Pushcart Prize for "The Time, the Place, the Loved One," which was first published in the Paris Review. She taught English and creative writing at St. Catherine's University for over twenty-five years.

“The range of situation and tone on display here is remarkable, yet always managed with ease and restraint. Susan Welch is a writer to welcome, and to celebrate.”

—Tobias Wolff

“These are haunting, rich, rewarding stories, full of incident, insight, and hard-won emotion. You’ll feel you have Susan Welch as a friend after finishing this stunning yet personable collections.”

—Rod Hansen

“Susan Welch shows in these stories an unusual sensibility that takes in a wide world. The unsentimental emotional rawness of the work is nicely balanced by the extremely strong craft.”

—Francine du Plessix Gray