Susan
Rich lives in
Seattle, Washington. Susan
Rich is author of the following books: The
Alchemist’s Kitchen
(White Pine, 2010) Cures
Include Travel (White Pine Press, 2006)
The
Cartographer’s Tongue/Poems of the World (White Pine Press, 2000), winner of the
PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry 2001 and the Peace Corps
Writers Award for Poetry 2001
The Rella Lossy Prize, Chapbook, San Francisco State Poetry Center, June 2000
Anthologized
poems, essays, and interviews are included in: Poets
of the American West.
Many Voices Press, MT, 2010
I Go to
the Ruined Place.
Lost Horse Press, ID. 2010 The
Working Poet: Seventy-Five Exercises in Poetry Writing. Autumn HousePress. PA 2009
Beloved:
150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude. Holy Cow! Press. MN 2009 Jump
Start: Northwest Renaissance Anthology. Steel Toe Books, KY 2009
Poem
Revised. Marion
Street Press, 2008 Hunger
and Thirst Food. San
Diego City Works 2008
Imagine
Peace, Edited by
Larry Smith, Bottom Dog Press, 2008 Poem,
Revised, 54 Poems, Revisions and Discussion, Marion Street Press, 2008
Deep
Travel: Contemporary Americans Abroad, Bark Press, 2007 In the
Eye: a collection of writings for those affected by Katrina, Thunder Rain, 2007
Illuminations
– Expressions of Personal Spiritual Experience, Tenspeed Press, 2006 Family
Matters: Poems of Our Families, Bottom Dog Press, 2005
O Taste
and See: Food Poems,
Bottom Dog Press, 2003 Sea of
Voices, Isle of Story,
Triple Tree Publishing, 2003
Best Essays of the Northwest, University of Oregon Press, 2002
Susan Rich has received awards from PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement, and Peace Corps Writers. Her fellowships include an Artists Trust Fellowship from Washington State and a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa. She has worked as a staff person for Amnesty International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia Herzegovina, and a human rights trainer in Gaza and the West Bank. Rich lived in the Republic of Niger, West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, later moving to South Africa to teach at the University of Cape Town on a Fulbright Fellowship.
Rich’s
international awards include the Times Literary Supplement Award, a residency
at the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland and a residency at Fundacion Valparaiso
in Spain. Other poetry honors include an Artist Trust Fellowship, a 4 Culture
Award, a Seattle CityArtist Project Award, a GAP Award, and participation in
the Cuirt Literary Festival in Galway, Ireland. Her
poems have been published in the Antioch Review, Alaska Quarterly Review,
Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Review, Gettysburg Review, New England
Review, Northwest Review, Poetry International and The Southern Review. Susan is an alumna of Hedgebrook,
the Helen Whiteley Center and the Ucross Foundation. She serves on the boards
of Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge Press and Whit Press.
Educated at the University of Massachusetts, Harvard University, and the University of Oregon, Susan Rich lives in Seattle and teaches at Highline Community College where she runs the reading series, Highline Listens: Writers Read Their Work.
More info on Susan Rich can be found at her website: here
Beyond Biographical Statements: "Someday I’ll write a travel piece on the places I’ve slept or tried to sleep while on the road, but who will believe it? A hotel under gunfire in Croatia, a whorehouse in Mopti, one haunted Edinburgh flat. As much as these nights are emblazoned in my memory, they are not the reason I keep answering the allure of travel still whistling at my door.
Responding to this calling, opening this blue door, sends me somewhere more complex than these adventures imply. For me, the external journey of the traveler and the internal mapping of the poet are different sides of one central desire: the search for an extended worldview. Perhaps my poetry is a kind of distilled reflection of my travels, often written years after returning home. Almost a decade elapsed between when I completed my Peace Corps service and began the first poems of living in the Republic of Niger. I needed the passing of time to let go of the literal. I needed time in order to forget what I didn't know and to move into a more internal mapping of my experience.
The act of mapping seems right to me in terms of exploration: the poet’s and the adventurer’s. The process is ongoing; the constant questioning of which road or line break to turn on and which one to privilege or revise altogether. The daily accidents that bring the poet, the traveler, into unexplored territory may offer new experiences that knock us off balance, literally and figuratively so that we no longer know who we are or where we stand. The poet-traveler rearranges the geological terrain with her own nomadic coordinates. Who could ask for more?" Susan Rich