Susann Cokal

Susann Cokal grew up with a roomful of books and Barbies, with whom she acted out elaborate stories. For a while she lived on the edge of wild land covered in sagebrush and cactus, playing in a dry creek bed. But she was born in California and has lived most of her life by the crashing waves and barking sea lions: In San Diego, she used to write on the beach; in Berkeley, she earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature; on the Central Coast, she bought her first wetsuit and published her first novel.

She comes from a Danish family whose traditions have worked their way into her novels. The Kingdom of Little Wounds is set in a watery, witchy, mermaidy kingdom in Scandinavia, 1572. The tale of plotting between three outcasts - a seamstress, a slave, and a mad queen - involves mysterious illness, a conniving count, and plenty of court secrets. It comes out in October 2013 and is recommended for both young adults and regular adults.

California and the Southwest gave Susann much of the material for her novel Breath and Bones, in which a Danish artist's model is set loose in the Wild West, to chase a lost love and find her tuberculosis increasing with her lovesickness. Susann also studied medieval history, art history, and literature in Poitiers, France, which gave her the origins and inspiration for Mirabilis, wherein a wet nurse is suspected of working miracles.

Susann is also the author of numerous short stories, essays, and articles about contemporary literature and pop culture - from supermodels to zoos, gynecology to the concepts of the sublime and horror - and she is a frequent reviewer for the Sunday New York Times Book Review.

She now lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she teaches creative writing and contemporary narrative at Virginia Commonwealth University. She breeds goldfish in a wee backyard pond that reminds her of the ocean and is working on a ghost story set in that very house in the 1920s.