Susan’s Background

Susan grew up on a farm in Minnesota on land originally occupied by the Sioux. She is the third of five siblings and shared a bedroom with her three sisters. She tended the garden with her mother, shoveled snow with her dad, and shared daily chores.  The week was structured like the dishtowels her mother embroidered: Monday was Wash Day, Tuesday was Ironing, Wednesday was Sewing, Thursday was Shopping, Friday was Cleaning, Saturday was Baking, and Sunday was Church.  

Sunday was a big deal. The family, all seven of them, piled into the car in the pre-seatbelt days to rush to church for the 8 a.m. service. They usually arrived just as the church bells were ringing and the organist began playing the opening hymn. Church, religion, spirit, service, and generosity integrated with a deep faith, typical of living close to the land, that God, the Almighty, would provide rain and fertilizer to nourish the seeds, sunshine to coax growth, protection against pests, hail storms, and drought. Neighbors worked together and shared equipment. Susan grew up loving wild cats, Tallfoot, the pet lamb, Pepper, the dog, and Buddy, the horse.

At an early age, Susan’s favorite game was playing school. She went on to teach in high school and college classrooms, living rooms, board rooms, prison, and public forums.

She is the founder of the Catalysts Institute for Local Control, a civic organization dedicated to empowering communities to engage more fully in the decisions that shape their neighborhoods and natural environments. Her activism reflects the same spirit as her poetry: an unwavering faith in the goodness and intelligence of ordinary people, and in the power of affirmation and action as forces for change.

Rooted in Marin County, California, Susan tends her garden, her writing, and her community with the same devotion. Her poems arise from the sensory details of daily life—the scent of basil, the texture of a leaf, the hush before sunrise—and reach toward larger questions of faith, belonging, kindness, and the desperate desire for integration of God and the good.

She is the author of What to Do Between Here and There: Activities for Families on the Go (Prentice Hall) and the Simply Go*d series—collections of praise poems and original colorings that invite readers into mindfulness, reflection, and delight. The first two volumes, Simply Go*d: Praise Poems Celebrating the Divine in Daily Life and Simply Go*d: Praise Poems for Everyday Mindfulness, open to a journey of art and awareness, where language and color become tools of perception, power, and play.