About Susan
Susan Richardson is a writer, performer and educator whose work celebrates and defends animals and wild places, re-engaging our imaginations with them and inspiring deep connections with the more-than-human world.
Her debut work of creative non-fiction, Where the Seals Sing, is published by William Collins. She has also written four collections of poetry, the latest of which, Words the Turtle Taught Me, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award.
Susan is represented by Charlotte Atyeo of Greyhound Literary.
Blending Natural History and Travel, Memoir and Myth…
With their expressive eyes and whiskers more sensitive than our fingertips, grey seals have visited our shores and enriched our culture for centuries. Yet we still know relatively little about these extraordinary animals.
In Where the Seals Sing, her new work of creative non-fiction, Susan journeys to the crags and crevices of Britain’s coast and islands, learning not only how grey seals live but also, in the light of the many threats they face, how we should live more sympathetically with them.
Blending Natural History and Travel, Memoir and Myth…
With their expressive eyes and whiskers more sensitive than our fingertips, grey seals have visited our shores and enriched our culture for centuries. Yet we still know relatively little about these extraordinary animals.
In Where the Seals Sing, her new work of creative non-fiction, Susan journeys to the crags and crevices of Britain’s coast and islands, learning not only how grey seals live but also, in the light of the many threats they face, how we should live more sympathetically with them.
Other Books
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Words The Turtle Taught Me
Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and emerging from Susan's residency with the Marine Conservation Society, 'Words the Turtle Taught Me' includes both poetry and creative non-fiction on endangered ocean wildlife.
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skindancing
A Celtic selkie. A prehistoric lionman. A sleep-starved woman taunted by an insomnia llama. A hippo living under the stairs. Susan's third poetry collection, 'skindancing', explores human/animal metamorphosis and our tangled relationship with the wild.
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Where the Air is Rarefied
Featuring Susan's poetry alongside images by printmaker Pat Gregory, 'Where the Air is Rarefied' focuses on environmental and mythological themes relating to the Far North.
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Creatures of the Intertidal Zone
Susan's first collection of poetry, 'Creatures of the Intertidal Zone', was inspired by her journey through Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland in the footsteps of an intrepid eleventh century female Viking.
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Two of Me Now
Performed in the UK, Finland and Canada, 'Two Of Me Now' is a poetic drama about biological and literary motherhood, as reflected in the lives and work of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.
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Praise for Susan’s Writing
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Cut and precise, archaic and innovative, transcendent and in-the-moment…a vital, glorious and salutary lesson for us all.
– Philip Hoare, author of 'The Sea Inside'
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Susan Richardson is a national treasure. When I read her poetry all of my senses come alive. There are few literary pleasures greater than reading her poems. One of these is watching her perform them
– Jonathan Balcombe, author of 'What a Fish Knows'
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She writes in prehensile language, capable of grasping something vast, ancient, chthonic: the Earth in must
– Jay Griffiths, author of 'Wild'
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Susan Richardson beautifully marries the landscape of the polar regions with their – and her own – emotional topography
– Sara Wheeler, author of 'Terra Incognita'
Latest news
Some Past and Future EventsMoving Words is an exciting new collaboration between Susan and movement director Sarah Perry. Their next co-facilitated writing workshop, exploring how diverse ways of moving can inspire, shape and transform both poetry and prose, is online on Saturday November 8th. Further info and booking details here.
Over the past year, Susan has much enjoyed being involved in 'Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis', a University of Kent-based project. Her writing workshop facilitation focused on animal language and she was also commissioned to write a new sequence of poems exploring the project's theme. You can read her poems, and watch her perform them, here.
