To celebrate the upcoming paperback release of her memoir Home Is Where We Start this July, we are excited to welcome Susanna Crossman to Exeter Custom House.
(Interested in writing your own story? Susanna will also be joining us for our Life Stories short course, taking place online and in person this Summer. Find out more about that course on quaywords.org.uk)
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About Home is Where We Start:
“Beautiful, Bold, Tender. I loved this gorgeous memoir about making home” – Dr. Pragya Agarwal
In the late seventies, six-year-old Susanna moved with her mother and siblings to a utopian commune in rural England. For over fifteen years, she lived inside a crumbling mansion with fifty adults and children, trying to remake the world.
Decades later, with the benefit of hindsight, she returns to her own childhood with pressing questions. What happens to children when we try to abolish the family? What is it really like to be the product of a social experiment? And how can we criticise the damage caused by revolutions while retaining a belief in the power of change? Part personal memoir, part critical analysis, Crossman turns to leading thinkers in philosophy, sociology and ethics to examine the many meanings of family and home.
Helen Garnons-Williams says: “Susanna is an extraordinary writer, and in this lyrical, expansive and richly-layered memoir she explores the troubling questions of responsibility, freedom, family and revolution with fierce intelligence and clear-eyed empathy”.
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About Susanna Crossman:
Susanna Crossman is an essayist and award-winning fiction writer. Her memoir, Home is Where We Start, was published by Fig Tree, Penguin, in 2024. Her new novel, The Orange Notebooks, will be published by Bluemoose Books in 2025. She has recent work in Aeon, The Guardian, Vogue, Paris Review, and more. A published novelist in France, she regularly collaborates with artists and film-makers.
Currently, when she’s not writing, she works internationally as a lecturer and clinical arts-therapist. Susanna has run writing and creativity seminars on three continents (Sarah Lawrence College (NY, USA), Kangwon National University (South Korea), University of Botswana, Université Rennes 2 (FR), EDF and more…). Born in the UK, Susanna Crossman grew up in an international commune and has lived in France for over half her life.
📸 photo: Simon Torlotin
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