Susan Fales Hill

             In March 2011 we took flight for something.....
  stylish, upscale, witty, and irresistably feisty with
Susan Fales-Hill, critically acclaimed author, award winning television writer and producer (Cosby Show, Different World, and Suddenly Susan), prominent New York philanthropist and fabulous socialite.
Ms. Fales-Hill will discuss her upbeat, deliciously captivating and devilishly humorous novel One Flight Up.

                This is a flight that no one wanted to miss!
We journeyed and filled your teacups with an afternoon of literature, fun, and drama!
Click to view photos

About Susan Fales Hill
Courtesy of New York Social Diary and Simon and Schuster

Susan Fales-Hill is an award-winning television writer and producer. She has worked on shows ranging from The Cosby Show to A Different World, Linc's, and Suddenly Susan. She is a contributing editor at Essence, and her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Town & Country, and Travel & Leisure. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Always Wear Joy. She is also author of the best selling novel One Flight Up. A graduate of Harvard College, Susan lives in New York City with her husband and their daughter. Fales-Hill attended Lycee Francaise where she made friendships she has kept all her life. She grew up multi-lingual: “I spoke English with my mother, French with my father, and Italian with my nanny,” she recalled. As a teenager she also learned Spanish, and spoke Creole with her mother. To this day she often picks up European publications to read, reads books in other languages besides English, and listens to books on tape in Spanish, French or Italian.

Life with mama was never dull. She grew up around “grand divas,” she told an interviewer Constance White writing for Essence Magazine, when promoting her memoir Always Wear Joy, (HarperCollins) — women like Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Diana Sands. “Though they didn’t (always) have half-million dollar budgets to buy clothes from a couturier, they had incredible style.”

“You know, ‘Daahhh-ling!’ When I look back now I realize it was very empowering. These women were traveling, they had relationships, they had jewels, they had furs. They bought the things themselves. If a man did buy for them, it was because the women were objects of total adulation.”

She graduated from Harvard with honors in Literature and History in 1985. Right after that she went to work as a writer on The Cosby Show, then in its second season. A year later she was transferred to the staff of A Different World. In 1998 she co-created the series Linc’s with Tim Reid, where she was executive producer and head writer for two years.

She is very active in New York social and philanthropic circles, on the Board of Trustees of the American Ballet Theatre, active with the Studio Museum in Harlem and the East Side House Settlement. She attends many of the major charity galas every year in New York such as The Frick Collection galas, the Museum of the City of New York evenings, the New York Botanical, and hosts an annual dinner for the Fales Library which is part of the Bobst/NYU Library, and was given by her grandfather in memory of his father. She is a member of the International Best Dressed List, and besides her memoir, she is a contributor to several magazines, including Vogue.

She met her husband Aaron, a banker, on a blind date. Mr. Hill, who is African-American, grew up in New Hampshire where his father was on the faculty at Dartmouth. He is one of those society husbands (and there are a number of them) who does not share quite the same enthusiasm for socializing that his wife does. Twice a week, if that, maybe, is his limit, and so she is often seen attending either alone or on the arm of a close male friend. The couple live on Park Avenue and last year Susan gave birth to their first child.

Although her mother had a profound influence on her, many aspects of her life, and her personality reflect her father’s heritage. She is a very gracious woman but with more of that reserve of her New England ancestors than her mother’s Caribbean joie de vivre. A couple of years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations, she spoke about her grandfather Fales’ gift of the Fales Library to NYU, with wit, humor and a sense of her unique ancestry. She opened her speech with a few words about her mother who had passed away (from emphysema at 74) only a week or so before. She said she knew that her mother was looking down from her heavenly place and assessing what her daughter was wearing with her unerring eye for style. Susan then, as if responding to her mother’s critique, replied: “If you think I should be wearing more accessories, then you’ll have to speak to grandfather about that because he’s the one who preferred books to jewels.”

At forty-two, Fales-Hill is one of the upcoming generation of social leaders of New York. Her bi-racial background makes her somewhat unique although not entirely. There are a growing number of men and women of color who making a place for themselves in New York, professionally, socially and culturally. Although, in an interview with Cathy Horyn of the New York Times a couple of years ago, she said that "While I find there's openness and people are very lovely, white and black, New York is somewhat segregated." Although her mother and her generation made great inroads, Susan Fales-Hill will no doubt see it change thoroughly, and most likely have quite a bit to do with it.