About Sandra Hutchison
Short Bio
Born and raised in the Tampa Bay area, Sandra Hutchison survived a transplant to snowy Greenfield, Massachusetts in high school and eventually stopped sulking about it, although she may still be working it out in her fiction. She is the author of six novels, “The Awful Mess,” “The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire,” “Bardwell’s Folly,” “Disorganize Me,” “The Complete Disaster,” and “The Utter Catastrophe,” all published by Sheer Hubris Press (Tantor Media has also published an audio version of “The Awful Mess.”) She lives in Troy, New York.
Long Bio
Born and raised in the Tampa Bay area, Sandra Hutchison survived a transplant to snowy Greenfield, Massachusetts in high school and eventually stopped sulking about it, although she may still be working it out in her fiction.
She graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has an MA in fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire in Durham. After a short stint teaching high school in New Hampshire, she worked for many years in publishing and advertising in New Jersey before the family moved to the Capital District of New York, where she taught writing at Hudson Valley Community College as an adjunct professor.
Sandra’s first job in publishing was editing computer books in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Along with neighboring towns, it inspired the setting (not the plot) of The Awful Mess. For an indie debut by an unknown author, The Awful Mess performed quite well, and it was also one of five general fiction semifinalists for the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
Her second novel, The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire, about a girl and a man twice her age helping each other survive terrible trauma, is set in Western Massachusetts, in a town inspired by Greenfield and other towns neighboring the five colleges just south of there.
Her third novel, Bardwell’s Folly, about a heroine who finds home only after being forced to leave it, is set approximately where Shelburne Falls and Buckland, Massachusetts exist in real life, and also draws on Sandra’s own Southern roots, in a purely fictionalized way.
In January 2019 she published a fourth novel, Disorganize Me, about a professional organizer whose life spirals out of control when she falls for a man who grows up thinking he’s an American citizen of Puerto Rican descent, but finds out in the worst way possible that he isn’t a citizen at all.
In 2020 and 2021, Hutchison published The Complete Disaster and The Utter Catastrophe, sequels to The Awful Mess. These stand-alone sequels are also set in Lawson, New Hampshire and follow the Jennings family and friend Annie Soper and niece Megan Cantwell into 2010 and 2016, respectively.
Sandra’s earliest “published” writing was play writing, with a staged reading of “Michael’s First Play” in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the mid-80s. Her short play Nude with Bearded Irises premiered in October of 2013 as part of the Circle Theater Players’ festival of original one acts at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts in Averill Park, New York and won her a nod for “Meritorious Achievement in Writing” from TANYS. Seducing Alice followed in 2018.
Sandra is available to local book groups and will also happily respond to email requests for further discussion sent to sandrahutchison (at) sheerhubris.com.
A recovering adjunct professor who enjoys teaching enough that she’ll accept way too little money for it, she has also presented on publishing at various locations in upstate New York and western Massachusetts. Sandra is happy to talk not just about her own books, but about writing, publishing, and marketing in traditional, indie, and hybrid markets.