Susan Scarf Merrell

Susan Scarf Merrell is Associate Editor of The Southampton Review and Assistant Professor in the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook Southampton. She runs the MFA’s Wednesday night Writers Speak series.

She is the author of the novel A Member of the Family and the nonfiction book The Accidental Bond: How Sibling Connections Influence Adult Relationships. Her short stories and essays have been published in the literary reviews Tin House, The Southampton Review, and The New Haven Review. She has also written on the subject of adoption for The Daily Beast, and on author Shirley Jackson's Vermont homes for Writershouses.com. Merrell's articles have appeared in Edible East End, Self, New Woman, Parents, Parenting, Child, Psychology Today and elsewhere.

Merrell’s national media appearances include The Today Show, Dateline, The O’Reilly Factor and Talk of the Nation. A graduate of Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences, Merrell holds an MFA from The Bennington Writing Seminars. She is at work on a novel about the novelist Shirley Jackson (The Lottery) and her husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman.