Susan Scott works at the crossroads of story, spirit, self, and culture, collaborating with artists, activists, and scholars across North America and Europe.
Books include Body & Soul: Stories for Stories and Seekers, an anthology that complements an earlier collection, Stories in My Neighbour’s Faith: Narratives from World Religions in Canada. Temple in a Teapot, a chapbook that plumbs the sublime and suppressed in American religious history, was launched on a 1,000-mile tour of western states.
Works-in-progress include Sainted Dirt, on shame and the sacred in the lives of women and girls, and a chapbook called Blood, Sand, Bread: An Ecology of Memory. A life writing collaborative of women writers and theologians is working on an anthology; details TBA.
Susan is a consulting editor with The New Quarterly (TNQ), where she served as the magazine’s lead nonfiction editor (2012-9). She has midwifed more than 20 books and dozens of award-winning essays, and has taught in communities and classrooms in the U.S. and Canada, including at Renison University College, St. Jerome’s University, and Wilfrid Laurier University, with guest lectures at the Yale Institute for Sacred Music (ISM).
Award-winning collaborations include the humanitarian arts initiative, the Walkerton Water Stories Project and its offspring the Water Stories Project (2001-05), as well as Native Immigrant’s culture work in Montreal and Chile (2013-23). The life writing webinars she co-founded (2020-23) attracted an international audience and mentored rising writers.
Community-building, like collaborating, is a cornerstone of practice. Susan was associate creative director of the Wild Writers Literary Festival (2013-9); director of the Wild Writers Mentorship Program (2020-22) and the Write on the French River Creative Writing Retreat (2018-19); and has taken part in arts adjudication, including National Magazine Awards. From 2019-2023, she served as a board director with the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund.
Life writing expertise rooted in doctoral work in anthropology, fine arts, and religious studies (University of Pittsburgh) included field work with Holocaust survivors. Susan holds an MA in Religion & Culture (Wilfrid Laurier University), a graduate certificate in spiritual direction (Jubilee Program), and a graduate certificate in creative writing from the Humber School for Writers.
Watch for Susan cycling along the Spur Line Trail, wicker basket brimming with baguettes.