Susan Rich is the author of five poetry collections including Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy, 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, winner of the PEN USA Award. She edited, along with Brian Turner and Catherine Barnett, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders (McSweeneys).

Rich has received awards and fellowships from Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement of London, Peace Corps Writers, Artist Trust, CityArtists, and 4Culture.

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 on a Fulbright Fellowship.

Rich’s international awards include: the Times (London) Literary Supplement Award, a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland and a residency at Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain. Other poetry honors include an Artist Trust Fellowship, 4 Culture Awards, a Seattle CityArtist Project Award, GAP Awards, and participation 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, Antioch Review, Christian Science Monitor, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, New England Review, O Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, and World Literature Today.

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

Educated at the University of Massachusetts, Harvard University, and the University of Oregon, Susan Rich lives in Seattle and teaches at Highline College where she runs the reading series, Highline Listens: Writers Read Their Work. She is co-founder and director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Writing Retreat for Women.