The next South End Writes event at the South End Library will feature Susan Conley, who will read from  her debut-memoir, "The Foremost Good Fortune" on Tuesday, April 26, at 6:30 PM. Conley, who reported from China for the New York Times about the H1N1 flu epidemic --the China Flu Blues-- in 2009, lived there with her sinologist husband, Tony, and two young sons.  But, she writes,  "what happens while we’re there is that one of us gets cancer. It turns out to be me."

"The Foremost Good Fortune is just about as honest a book as you'll ever read," wrote the Washington Post. "The trip Conley went on was to a far more complex place that she envisioned. This is a beautiful book about China and cancer and how to be an authentic, courageous human being."

A former South End resident and native of Maine, Conley has taught creative writing and literature at Emerson College, Simmons College and within Harvard's Teachers as Writers Program.  She and her family have since returned to Portland, Maine, where she started a creative writing lab, The Telling Room. She is now working on another novel.