Susan Bono, Author
What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home (2014)
For writer Susan Bono, the last thirty years have mostly been about trying to stay ahead of a husband, growing kids, aging parents, and an eccentric old house, in spite of detours, deadlines, unexpected changes, and inevitable losses. But through it all, she’s been taking notes. In her collection of short essays, What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home, Bono is drawn to the mystery, tenderness, and humor at the core of everyday experience and the ever-shifting nature of the place she calls home.
From 1995—2015, Susan Bono edited and published Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, a publication that celebrated the power of the personal voice in print and online. What began as a six-page newsletter for winners of an annual essay contest offering $250 in prize money grew to a twenty-page illustrated magazine that paid $1,300 in annual prizes.
Beginning in 1997, Tiny Lights began living part of its life online. Visit the archived site at tiny-lights.com for “Lights Online” featuring short works of memoir, “Searchlights & Signal Flares,” a monthly writers exchange, “Flash in the Pan,” a column for hard-to-classify non-fiction nuggets, and “Guiding Lights: Notes on Craft & Process.” For twenty years, Tiny Lights provided ways for writers of personal narrative to shine. By keeping the lights on in this archive, we still do.
Thumb through a sample print issue with button below.
Anthologies Containing Susan’s Essays
(To view or purchase on Amazon, select the cover.)
Essays, Articles, Interviews
(Select title to read.)
Anniversary Waltz Northern California Bohemian, February 2001
Piece of Cake Judi Hendrick’s website, February 2009
Driver’s Ed Northern California Bohemian, March 2001
Review of Halls of Fame John D’Agata’s collection of lyric essays in the North Bay Bohemian, 2001
Special to the Examiner February 1997
A Conversation with Sheila Bender 2015
An Interview with Rebecca Lawton at Beccalawton.com, 2015
An interview with Susan Winter for her Create on the Side blog, March 2014
Hooked on Postcards! Petaluma Argus Courier, July 2014
What is Personal Essay? Marlene Cullen’s The Write Spot, October 2013
Aqus Café Literary Saloon Petaluma Argus Courier, April 2010
North Coast Literary Scene in 2002 reported by Jonah Raskin
Podcasts
In conversation with Sheila Bender, (March 2016)
Gill Mansergh’s Word by Word on KRCB (Nov. 9, 2014)
Susan Bono, Editor
Susan Bono was editor-in-chief of the annual Noyo River Review for the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference for eight years.
Susan edits the Expressions Series, an annual collection of writing from The Varenna Writer's Club of Sonoma County, CA.
As a reader of Susan's collection of personal essays, What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home, as a contributor to and reader of Tiny Lights, the brilliant journal she founded and edited, and as facilitator and teacher with her to bring US writers' to write with Turkish writers, I have the highest admiration for Susan's work as a writer, and editor and teacher. We have much to learn from her.
- Sheila Bender, poet, memoirist, teacher