Girls is described by Deborah Alma as "Beautifully written, enthralling and richly layered account of extraordinary times and places. Many of the episodes are based on eye-witness accounts of actual historical events. Castillo casts an unflinching eye on the horrors of slavery and the strength of women against the most terrible odds, and brings it wonderfully to life in this powerful novel." Poetry Castillo has published five collections of poems and describes her writing as being focused on "Nature; the wonders and the weirdness of family; sounds and accents and voices; incidents when I travel; the language of children, which is wonderfully direct and uncluttered with stale metaphors; old photographs; songs; paintings." Her poem 'Bird of God', about the painter Joanna Boyce, won the Pre-Raphaelite Society's 2018 Poetry Competition. Jill Munro describes The Gun-Runner's Daughter (2018) in the following: "Susan Castillo Street weaves a feisty autobiographical web of familial relationships, cottonmouths, cicadas and crabbing amongst many other varied subjects; a ‘bayou fusillade’ (The Alchemist) of images and well-hewn narratives from a Southern Gothic childhood to the present day. Be ready to be transported to Mississippi and beyond by this vivid and intriguing collection brimming with the lessons of a well-lived life." Marriage Jonathan Street and Susan Castillo married in 2011: Street died the year after following a fall. The Guardian obituary described their life together "in an oast house near Tunbridge Wells, which they restored together. Outside work, Jonathan was a book-lover and film fanatic, particularly fond of French New Wave cinema and classic Hollywood film noir. One of the founding members of the Campaign for Real Ale, he enjoyed nothing more than sipping a pint of Harveys at his village pub and revelled in the peace and solitude of his home, where deer would wander into the garden from the nearby forest." Media appearances Panel member, programme on the Salem Witch Trials, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, November 2015. Panel member, programme on Pocahontas, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4. November 2013 Bibliography Anthologies The Literatures of Colonial America: An Anthology Co-edited with Ivy Schweitzer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Edited collections Nineteenth-Century Southern Gothic Short Fiction: Haunted by the Dark. (co-edited with Charles L. Crow). (Anthem, 2020) The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic (co-edited with Charles Crow). (Palgrave, 2016) American Travel Writing and Empire (co-edited with David Seed). (Liverpool University Press/University of Chicago Press, 2009) A Companion to