Bio 

Susan Rich is the author of six books of poetry including Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press), Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy (White Pine Press), shortlisted for the Julie Suk Award, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a Finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue / Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA Award.

Rich has also co-edited two prose anthologies: The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders (McSweeney’s) with Catherine Barnett, Ilya Kaminsky and Brian Turner, and more recently, Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews for Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press), co-edited with Kelli Russell Agodon.

Her writing has received fellowships from Artists Trust, Seattle/King County, 4Culture, the Fulbright Foundation, and Peace Corps Writers.

She has worked as a staff person for Amnesty International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a human rights trainer in Gaza and the West Bank. Rich lived in the Republic of Niger, West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, later moving to South Africa to teach at the University of Cape Town.

Rich’s international awards include: the Times Literary Supplement Award (London,UK), a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Center (Ireland) and a residency at Fundacion Valparaiso, (Spain). Other poetry honors include an GAP Awards and a featured poet in the Cuirt Literary Festival in Galway, Ireland.

Her poems have been published in the Academy of American Poets: Poem-a-Day, Alaska Quarterly Review, Bennington Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Slowdown, among other places.

Rich’s anthologized poems and essays are included in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy; Best Essays of the Northwest, Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium and Poets of the American West. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net Awards.

Susan is an alumna of the Blue Mountain Center, Hedgebrook, the Helen Whiteley Center, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Ucross Foundation. She has served on the boards of Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge Press and Whit Press.

Educated at Harvard University, the University of Oregon, and the University of Massachusetts, Susan Rich lives in Seattle and teaches at Highline College where she chairs the National Poetry Month Committee. She is co-founder and executive director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Writing Retreat for Women and writes Blue Atlas on Substack.

Her next book, an anthology and different kind of guide, BIRDBRAINS: A LYRICAL GUIDE TO WASHINGTON STATE BIRDS, will be published by Raven Chronicles Press in 2025.