Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Suzanne Cope. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Suzanne, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Right now I am in Italy, finishing research for my next book Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Couriers, and Spies Who Helped Defeat the Nazis (Dutton, April, 2025). I was drawn to these stories, of course, because of the fight against oppression and the inspiration that these women can provide for us to fight for a cause bigger than themselves. But I was also drawn to this story because my grandmother lived in Italy when she was young, and was the same age as the women about whom I am writing. In a different reality – the family was separated and detained for a few hours at Ellis Island, for they were immigrating after the laws were becoming more onerous – my grandmother might have been one of them. She died when I was in high school, and there was so much I never knew to ask her about her family back in Italy, about her experiences growing up. I am thinking about her a lot as I finish this book.

Suzanne, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My primary profession is as a professor at NYU in the Expository Writing Program. I am lucky because of my wonderful colleagues who are doing all sorts of creating things – writing plays and poems and novels, doing academic research – and of course teaching. What is great about this role is that the department supports creative and academic work between semesters, in that there isn’t just one path they expect their professors to be following with their research and writing. I still do some scholarly work, but am happy that in the last 5 and a half years that I have been at NYU I have been able to focus on writing books, as well as some articles and essays on related topics. My last book was POWER HUNGRY: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement (Chicago Review Press, 2021) and I am still asked to take part in events to talk about these issues. I love digging into a project like these two books – getting to spend time in the archives or interview people or seeing where history took place – to help it come alive for my readers and also amplify the voices and actions of these unsung leaders. While I sometime wish I had more time to write, at the same time I love that I have an academic community and framework to do this research, as well as wonderful colleagues and students.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I really do believe that writing is all about grit and that if you really keep at it – while refining your craft – you will find some success. Before I went back to grad school for my MFA and PhD, I worked in book publishing – so I even knew the reality and had some connections there. But I wasn’t serious about writing until after I left. I would send an essay out to dozens of places – and this was before submittable, back when half the time I had to send in snail mail! Eventually many of these were published in increasingly competitive places. I had a book project that I sent to dozens of agents – all no – and then almost got it published by a small press, but things fell apart. I was still undaunted and came up with another book proposal and then another. I finally found my current agent with a book proposal that didn’t sell, that turned into a book proposal that ALMOST sold – both of these for reasons that had much to do with the interests of the market at the time in late 2016 and early 2017 – that turned into POWER HUNGRY. I really do believe that each of these rejections led to the bigger and better project. In fact both POWER HUNRGY and WOMEN OF WAR were born from research from my last rejected proposal, which had come from the previous rejected proposal. And who knows – maybe I will go back to some of these ideas in the future!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I have found my goals evolving as my work evolves. I went from being inspired by personal stories as a creative nonfiction writer, to bringing in research to turning my focus on unsung female leaders during times of political and social unrest. POWER HUNGRY came from my research and interest in food as a tool for social and political change, but that research helped me realize that food, during World War II in this case, was but one of the ways that women could show their leadership during the resistance. By expanding beyond the role of food, I was able to tell a much broader and more interesting story. So my research interests and goals have been evolving – and I have learned to let them evolve, just as I evolve as a writer and scholar. But, ultimately, what I don’t believe will change is my intention to give voice to women who have nearly been lost to history.

Contact Info:

• Website: suzannecope.com
• Instagram: @suzannecope_phd
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannecope/
• Other: threads? same as instagram

Image Credits
headshot – Kurt Arnold – I will give some thought for other images and lyk