“[Swan’s writing offers] not only an enjoyable read, but also the chance to think and reflect on the vast complex living entity that is the world." —Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk

Where do we belong if we don’t fit in?

A memoir about what it means to defy expectations as a woman, a mother and an artist, for readers of Joan Didion and Gloria Steinem and listeners of the podcast Wiser than Me

Susan Swan has never fit inside the boxes that other people have made for her—the daughter box, the wife box, the mother box, the femininity box. Instead, throughout her richly lived, independent decades, she has carved her own path and lived with the consequences.

In this revealing and revelatory memoir, Swan shares the key moments of her life. As a child in a small Ontario town, she was defined by her size—attracting ridicule because she was six-foot-two by the age of twelve. She left her marriage to be a single mother and a fiction writer in the edgy, underground art scene of 1970s Toronto. In her forties, she embraced the new freedom of the Aphrodite years. Despite the costs to her relationships, Swan kept searching for the place she fit, living in the literary circles of New York while seeking pleasure and spiritual wisdom in Greece, and culminating in the hard-won experience of true self-acceptance in her seventies.

Swan examines the expectations of women of her generation and beyond using the lens of her then-unusual height as a metaphor for the way women are expected not to take up space in the world. Inspiring and thought-provoking, Big Girls Don’t Cry invites us to re-examine what we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves and ask how it could be different.

SUSAN SWAN's fiction has been published in twenty countries and received numerous honours. Her first novel, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World (1983), was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for fiction and the Smith’s Best First Novel Award, and is currently being made into a film. Her other books include the short story collection Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With (1996), the novel Last of the Golden Girls (1989), and The Wives of Bath (1993). The film adaptation of The Wives of Bath, called Lost and Delirious, has been released in 32 countries and was featured as a Premiere Selection at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Her most recent novel, What Casanova Told Me (2001), was published to rave reviews. Susan Swan lives in Toronto, Ontario, and is an associate professor of Humanities at York University.

Susan Swan's profile page

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than fifty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson. 

Margaret Atwood's profile page

“[Swan’s writing offers] not only an enjoyable read, but also the chance to think and reflect on the vast complex living entity that is the world." — Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk

“An exuberant meditation on feminism, sex, friendship, motherhood and writing. And learning to stand tall.” — Susan Coyne

“Speaking as a fellow oddball, I think that this is the best book about coming to terms with your differences from the norm (especially for women), that I've read. It's insightful, honest, and adept. Definitely, one of a kind.” — Pulitzer Prize-winner Jane Smiley

"In this riveting and vulnerable memoir, Susan Swan sheds light into the psychology and history of second-wave feminism, as she attempts to break out of the boxes that confine her – including the ones of her own making. In a world that demands women stay small, or to play-act as men to be taken seriously, this is the story of a woman who desired – who indeed had no choice – but to be big and beautiful." — Meghan Bell, author of Erase and Rewind and The Cassandra Project

"Shot through with light, this book is an original treasure. In her direct and mesmeric prose, Susan Swan delivers a portrait of becoming and belonging––a memoir of a life lived vividly and daringly in pursuit of liberty of expression in art and sex, motherhood and feminist justice. By escaping the boxes she was cast into, Swan redefines what a life and a body can hold."
— Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

"Reminding us of the women who came before and setting the stage for the women who will come after, Big Girls Don't Cry is a triumph. Swan's memoir is a playful and poignant exploration of identity, belonging, and womanhood that is as intimate as it is insistent." — Karen McBride, author of Crow Winter

"A warm, generous, and sharp reflection on a lifetime of daring to resist the boxes that seek to contain us. Radiating with both defiance and tenderness, this book is a delight." — Janika Oza, bestselling author of A History of Burning

"The deepest inspirations come from the most unlikely places. In Big Girls Don’t Cry, Susan Swan’s deliciously unconventional and snappily readable memoir, one of Canada’s best (and tallest) novelists trains her keen gaze upwards---at the astonishing ways her unconventional height has shaped everything from her relationships to her writing. A rewarding book for anyone who has been an outsider, forced to see themselves as they are—only to better understand the manageable scale of the world around them." — Ian Brown, author of Sixty