Biography
Susan Tichy is the author of seven books, most recently North|Rock|Edge: Shetland 2017/2019, a walker’s “I”-less encounter with the coasts of Shetland (Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions, 2022) and The Avalanche Path in Summer (Ahsahta, 2019), a muscle-memory of a life in mountains. Her 2015 volume, Trafficke (Ahsahta) is a mixed-form investigation of family, race, and language spanning from Reformation Scotland to the abolition of slavery in Maryland. She has written extensively about war and its human consequences, including the volumes Gallowglass (Ahsahta, 2010), Bone Pagoda (Ahsahta, 2007), and A Smell of Burning Starts the Day (Wesleyan, 1988). Her first book The Hands in Exile (Random House, 1983) was selected for the National Poetry Series. Her work has been published in the US, UK, and Australia, and been recognized by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, a Chad Walsh Poetry Prize, and numerous other awards. Since 1976, she has spent all or part of every year in Colorado. Now retired from 30 years teaching in George Mason University’s MFA & BFA programs, she divides her time between Colorado Springs and her hand-built, solar-heated cabin near Westcliffe.
