About Suzanne Uttaro Samuels

Suzanne Uttaro Samuels is a novelist, essayist, and legal scholar whose work explores identity, justice, and memory across generations and borders. Her award-winning stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines. Seeds of the Pomegranate is her debut novel.

The novel grew out of a family story passed down over generations: that her grandfather, as a young boy, survived a tenement fire in 1922. That account led her into years of research—through archives, prison records, and ship manifests—to piece together a lost chapter of family history and imagine what the official record left out. Set in early 20th-century New York, Seeds of the Pomegranate explores the hidden struggles of immigrants, artists, and women navigating survival and self-determination.

Suzanne was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s Rising Star contest and the Historical Novel Society’s First Pages competition, and her work received recognition in the Thomas Wolfe Prize for Fiction. She is currently working on The Orphans’ Wheel, a prequel set in 19th-century Sicily during the Italian Wars of Independence. It follows young Rosina Inglese, the formidable Nonna from Seeds, as revolution and loss shape the legacy to come.

Born and raised in Staten Island, Suzanne spent most of her life in and around New York City. A former professor of law and political science, she is the author of highly acclaimed books on constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and the continuing fight for gender and racial equality. After years in academia, she turned to fiction to illuminate the human stories that are often obscured by legal opinions and government documents.

She now lives in a cottage by a lake in the Adirondack Mountains with her husband, dog, and two cats. She writes in the early mornings, often surrounded by mist or snow, and always with coffee. When not writing, she enjoys hiking, reinventing old family recipes, researching ancestral stories, and reading novels with richly drawn characters—women and men alike—grappling with the weight of history. When stuck in a chapter, she bakes almond biscotti, just like Mimi might have.

If you're curious about the history behind Seeds of the Pomegranate or want a glimpse of the stories that didn’t make it into the novel, you’re warmly invited to subscribe to her newsletter or reach out. She loves hearing from readers.

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