SUSAN (SUZY) PARKER, an award-winning freelance writer and 

outdoor enthusiast, is the author of “Tumbling After: Pedaling 

Like Crazy After Life Goes Downhill,” a memoir that tells the 

story of how her life changed in a split second when a freak 

cycling accident left her husband, Ralph, permanently paralyzed 

below the shoulders. In this memoir devoid of self-pity and told 

with candor and wry humor, Suzy chronicles the transformation of 

her household into an oddball family of caretakers. 

Suzy Parker reports on life with Ralph in the “San Francisco 

Chronicle,” and has been published in the “San Francisco Chronicle,” 

“Washington Post,” “Chicago Tribune,” “San Jose Mercury News,” “The Sun,” 

“Hope,” the “Chattahoochee Review,” “Salon.com,” and “ZYZZYVA.” Her 

commentaries have aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and KQED’s 

“Perspectives.” She is a winner of the Richard J. Margolis National 

Literary Award, the California Independent Newspapers’ Writer 

Prize and the Best of the West Award for most outstanding 

columnist in a daily newspaper west of the Mississippi. The movie 

rights to her memoir, “Tumbling After,” have been optioned by 

HBO.