Susan Swan
AUTHOR

Susan Swan

Biographies & Memoirs
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Journalist, feminist, novelist, activist, teacher, Susan Swan's impact on the Canadian literary and political scene has been far-reaching. Susan Swan's critically acclaimed fiction has been published in twenty countries. Her newest novel, The Western Light, shares a heroine with her international bestseller, The Wives of Bath (published by Cormorant Books, September 2012). Swan's last novel, What Casanova Told Me, was published by Knopf in Canada (hardcover September 2004 and paperback 2005) and in the US by Bloomsbury (hardcover 2005 and paperback 2006). It has also been published in Spain, Russia, Serbia and Portugal. Swan's sixth book of fiction, What Casanova Told Me, links two women from different centuries through a long-lost journal about travels with Casanova in Italy, Greece and Turkey. It celebrates travel as a form of love. What Casanova Told Me was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region). It was a Globe and Mail Best Book; a Calgary Herald Top 10; a Now (Toronto) Top 10; and a Sun Times (Owen Sound) Top 10; and Asked For Adams was named one of Maclean's Top 5 literary characters for 2004. Swan shares a Puritan background with her heroine Asked For Adams. A branch of Swan's family immigrated to America in 1635 and settled near Boston before moving to Canada two centuries later. The Wives of Bath, (about a murder in a girls' boarding school) was a 1993 finalist for the U.K.'s Guardian Award and Ontario's Trillium Award. It was picked by a U.S. Readers' Guide as one of the best novels of the nineties. A feature film based on The Wives of Bath was released in the summer of 2001 in the U.S. and Canada under the title Lost and Delirious. The film starred Mischa Barton, Piper Parabo and Jessica Pare and was shown in 34 countries. It was also picked for premiere selection at Sundance and Berlin Film Festival 2001. Swan's other novels include The Biggest Modern Woman in the World, based on a true-life ancestor, a giantess who exhibited with P.T. Barnum, which was a finalist for Canada's Best First Novel Award and the Governor General's Award for Fiction. The Last of the Golden Girls, about the sexual awakening of young women in an Ontario cottage country, was originally published in 1989, and has been reissued in hardcover. Her collection of short stories, Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With was published in 1996. Two of its stories were published in Granta and in Ms. Magazine. Swan has retired from her position of Associate Professor of Humanities at York University and currently mentors creative writing students at the University of Toronto and Humber College's School of Creative Writing. In 1999-2000, she was awarded York's Millennial Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies. As chair, she hosted the successful Millennial Wisdom Symposium in Toronto featuring artists and social scientists debating the ways the past is recreated in popular culture and what wisdom the past has to offer us in the new century. Swan was chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2007-2008) and brought in a new benefits deal for Canadian writers and self-employed Canadians in the arts. A native of southwestern Ontario and graduate of McGill University, Susan Swan makes her home and garden in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood.
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  • Big Girls Don't Cry Audiobook By Susan Swan, Margaret Atwood - foreword cover art

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