Birth:
Sue Monk Kidd was born on August 12, 1948 in Sylvester, Georgia.
Sue Monk Kidd's Background:
Raised in rural Georgia, the daughter of an imaginative, story-telling father, Sue Monk Kidd knew early on that she wanted to be a writer. She cites Thoureau's Walden and Kate Chopin's The Awakening as early influences that would eventually lead to a writing career rooted in spirituality.
Kidd majored in nursing at Texas Christian University and graduated in 1970 with a B.S. degree. During her twenties she worked as a registered nurse and as a nursing instructor. She married her husband, Sandy Kidd, whith whom she had two children.
Sue Monk Kidd's Writing:
Kidd and her family were living in South Carolina where her husband taught at a small liberal arts college when she decided to enroll in writing classes. Her goal was to write fiction, but she began her career writing nonfiction inspirational pieces, many of which she published in Guideposts Magazine. A spiritual searching ensued, which Kidd chronicled in her first book, God's Joyful Surprise (1988), which she followed quickly with a second spiritual memoir, When the Heart Waits (1990).
While in her forties, Kidd turned her attention to a study of feminist spirituality, from which resulted The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996), recounting her spiritual journey from a Baptist upbringing to nontraditional feminist spiritual experiences.
Sue Monk Kidd is best known for her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees (2002), in which she tells the coming-of-age story set in 1964 of a fourteen year old girl and her black housekeeper, a modern classic that spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list, has been published in 35 countries, and is now taught in college and high school classrooms.
In 2005, Kidd followed with The Mermaid Chair, the story of a middle-aged married woman who falls in love with a Benedictine monk. Like The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair uses...