Stories by Susan Welch

April 1, 1997 • 5 x 7.5 • 128 pages • 978-1-56689-058-8

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.

About the author

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.

Reviews

“Susan Welch has given us an unusual, powerful collection. These are love stories of the highest order, that is, true stories about love—its cost, its strange, sometime appalling forms, its fragility. 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