A novelist and short-story writer, Eileen studied
philosophy and English literature at UCLA. She holds a Masters Degree in
Creative Writing from New York University, where she studied fiction with Paule Marshall, Chuck Wachtel, and Breyten Breytenbach. Her thesis advisor was E.L. Doctorow. Her first published short story "Into The Wind" appeared in The Mailer Review in October of 2013.
Eileen's novel, Paradise, is a Lower East Side family saga that speaks in tongues—English, Spanish, and Yiddish. It chronicles the unlikely friendship between two orphans, Jewish and Puerto Rican, separated in age by 60 years who ultimately give each other a reason to live. Breaking new ground in urban fiction, the spirit of the novel merges Henry Roth and Junot Diaz. Her second novel and a collection of stories are in
progress.
A chapter from Paradise was a top-ten finalist in the 2010 Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Contest, and received an honorable mention from the 2011 New Millennium Writings' Fiction Competition. Eileen's other work also received a 2011 honorable mention from Glimmer Train's Short-Story Award for New Writers; and a 2011 honorable mention from the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition (global). She received a
2009 teaching grant from Poets and Writers. Having started her writing life as a poet, she was a semi-finalist in the 1999 Nation/Discovery Poetry Contest.
She lives and works in New York City,
and can be reached at eileen@suttonstories.com.