A career educator, Susan has a BA in English and an MAIS in writing, English, and education. She has taught English, speech, drama, reading, and English as a Second Language to students from 7th grade through college level. She has also taught teachers.
Susan married her high school sweetheart and they have 3 children and 7 grandchildren. She lived most of her life in Virginia, the state where she was born, raised, worked and retired. Retiring from Fairfax County Public Schools in 2001, Susan and her husband relocated to a cottage on Smith Mountain Lake in southern Virginia. After 30 years of writing and living at Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, they relocated to Clemson, South. Carolina.
Susan has written freelance articles published in Smith Mountain Laker.Com, Blue Ridge Traditions, Cooperative Living and other publications. She has also been published in The Washington Post and The Roanoke Times, The Smith Mountain Eagle, The Bedford Bulletin, and The Franklin News Post. Her writing repertoire includes articles for educational and professional magazines and several recipes for Taste of Home magazines and cookbooks.
Susan writes in a variety of genres. Her first published novel, EAGLEBAIT, is a Young Adult anti-bully book, originally published in hardcover in 1989 by Harcourt, now updated with cyber-bullying and available in paperback and e-book. Between 2013 and 2016 Susan published through The Wild Rose Press (NY) the Overhome Trilogy. The cozy mystery/Southern Gothic series includes, in order, A RED, RED ROSE, BENEATH THE STONES and NOBODY KNOWS. Based on Civil War history, contemporary characters deal with the ghosts of our Southern past. Adult cozy mystery, A MURDER OF PRINCIPLE, published in 2017 by TWRP, is set in a contemporary high school. Currently, Susan has published a picture book for children. SPOOKY YOGA, 2022 is a rhymed action story for ages 3-7 available in paperback via Amazon.
TEACHING
When Susan taught at Thoreau Intermediate School in Vienna, Virginia, she started a literary magazine, A Cabin in the Woods. At Centreville High, where she later taught, she initiated an Authors Club and launched an annual Writers Conference for student writers.
Susan has toured dozens of elementary, middle, and high schools in Fairfax County, giving author talks and conducting writers’ workshops for students. She has worked with creative writing classes at the Gereau Center in Franklin County, Virginia, and participated in student writing contests sponsored by the Lake Writers. She has led writing workshops and book talks in Hawaii and South Carolina. Susan is an active member of Authors Guild, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, South Carolina Writers Association and OLLI writers at Clemson University.