Biography

Susan was born and raised in Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently lives in Madison. She is retired from the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority and now does free-lance editing, writing, and workshops.

She's the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press) and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). A second chapbook, Where Good Swimmers Drown, is forthcoming from Concrete Wolf Press in Fall 2012. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary journals, including Ascent, Blackbird, Calyx, Crab Orchard Review, diode, MARGIE, Nimrod, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Smartish Pace, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Susan also has work appearing or forthcoming in many anthologies, including A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poems, eds. Oliver de la Paz and Stacey Lynn Brown (The University of Akron Press), Fire On Her Tongue: An eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry, eds. Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy, e-book, (Two Sylvias Press), City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poems, ed. Ryan Van Cleave (University of Iowa Press), and A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women's Poetry (Calyx Books).

Among her awards are the 2011 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Prize, the 7th Annual Oneiros Press Broadside Competition, The Poetry Center of Chicago's 14th Annual Juried Reading (third place), the CALYX inaugural Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, and the Council for Wisconsin Writers' Lorine Niedecker Award. She has received a Rowland Foundation residency to the Vermont Studio Center, a residency to the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and two residencies to Edenfred in Madison, Wisconsin sponsored by the Terry Family Foundation.

She has previously served on the Council for Wisconsin Writers Board of Directors and on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission.