About Susan

Born in Toronto, I grew up on the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, in a then newly-developed part of Oakville, bordered by farmland and noted for its creeks and wooded ravines. In my early years, if I wasn’t exploring the field next to our house or climbing one of the six apple trees on our suburban lot, I was probably at the local library, nose buried in a book.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Today, I make my home in the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W’SANEC peoples on Vancouver Island. But my habits of daily rambling and daily reading persist.

Although an early aptitude test suggested I’d do best as an advertising executive or a judge, neither marketing nor law proved a good fit. (What can I say? I tried.) Instead, I became a secondary school teacher and later, university instructor, and began, at last, to do what I’d wanted to do in the first place—write. My essays, fiction, and poetry have since appeared widely across North America, in journals such as Arc, The Bellingham Review, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, the Utne Reader, and Water~Stone, and have won a number of prizes and awards, including a National Magazine Award, the Edna Staebler Award for the Personal Essay, and the Judith Kitchen Prize in Creative Nonfiction.

My first book, Pathologies: A Life in Essays, was selected by Amazon.ca and 49th Shelf as one of 100 Canadian books to read in a lifetime, and has been called “deeply intelligent,” “original,” “nuanced,” and “wise.” My second book, Big Reader, is now available from independent bookstores and from my publisher, Freehand Books.