Susan Olding

Born and brought up in the GTA, Susan lived for many years in Kingston, Ontario, and has also lived in Vancouver, BC. She studied philosophy and political theory at University of Toronto, dropped out of law school but earned an education degree at Queen’s, and went on to acquire an MFA at UBC.  She has taught in a wide range of settings, from literacy centres to secondary schools to PhD-level classrooms. Along the way, she’s also waited tables; disemboweled chickens; sold soap, small leather goods, and fashions; written and edited content for an online fitness coaching company; served as a mentor and editor to emerging writers; and worked as a manuscript consultant and editor for several literary and university presses.

Susan is the author of two books: Big Reader: Essays, and Pathologies: A Life in Essays, winner of the CNFC’s Readers’ Choice Award in 2010 and selected by 49^th Shelf and Amazon.ca as one of 100 Canadian books to read in a lifetime. Her essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines throughout Canada and the U.S., including Arc, The Bellingham Review, Grain, Prairie Fire, Maisonneuve, The Malahat Review, and the Utne Reader, and have won a National Magazine Award, the Edna Staebler Prize for the Personal Essay, and other honours. A former Bread Loaf Scholar and Fellow in the Literary Journalism program at Banff, she is currently a doctoral candidate at Queen’s university, where her SSHRC-funded dissertation project combines biography, canon studies, and creative responses to the archive.