Becoming Susan Weiss

Susan grew up in Detroit—the great motor city—and continued to grow up, then, in eastern Pennsylvania. Even as a child, she was compelled to write; her body of works from that period include insistently rhyming poems and morbid, tragic tales most often ending in loss.

As an English major at Tufts University, Susan thought she would be ill-prepared to take on the world and so, towards the end of college, became certified as an elementary school teacher. She remained in the Boston area for years after graduation, writing, writing, always writing.

Yet Susan was destined to be a waitress, and in that role, she was an ardent campaigner for better tips. Along the way, she completed a Master’s degree in Counselor Education at Boston University, working first with alcoholics in a city clinic and then with men being released from jail. But burnout was inevitable, and waitressing looked pretty good again at that point.

Meanwhile, Susan was writing, writing, always writing. She learned how to live on minuscule amounts of money, not wanting to enslave herself to a full-time job that would interfere with her writing.

Susan moved to the Philadelphia area, where she began to publish some of her stories. She and her family resettled in Burlington, Vermont in 1999 and have lived there since. The family has no pets.