Susan Jane Gilman

Gilman’s second novel, Donna Has Left the Building, chronicles Donna Koczynski, a wife, mother, former punk rocker, and recovering alcoholic who blows up her own life and takes off on an epic quest across America that ultimately lands her in the middle of a refugee crisis halfway around the globe.

She made the keynote presentation entitled “There is No Lightning Bolt" at the TedXZurichWomen on May 29, 2015.

Gilman was born in New York City and grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City and was a student of Frank McCourt. Gilman attended Brown University where she got a B.A. in 1986. She received a Masters' in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan in 1993.

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven is a true story of the author setting out to backpack across China in 1986 and running into trouble with her friend and Chinese authorities.

Susan Jane Gilman (born October 22, 1964) is an American writer and novelist. She is the author of two novels, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street (2014) and Donna Has Left the Building (2019) in addition to three non-fiction books: Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven (2009); Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (2005); and Kiss My Tiara (2001).

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street is the author's first novel. It follows the rise and fall of Lillian Dunkle, a Russian immigrant who arrives in America as a child in 1914 and goes on become the doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises over the course of 70 years.