Susan Richardson

Susan Richardson is a writer, performer and educator. She was one of the poet-performers on Radio 4’s Saturday Live for four years, and spent a season writing and performing poetry for BBC Two’s coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show. She regularly runs writing workshops for wildlife conservation organisations such as WWF, the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB and has an ongoing writing residency with the British Animal Studies Network, facilitated by the University of Strathclyde.

Her latest book, Where the Seals Sing (William Collins, 2022), blends science and shamanism, natural history and travel, memoir and myth as she travels around the UK’s grey seal hotspots, exploring our complex relationship with this persecuted but enchanting species.

Her previous books include Words the Turtle Taught Me (Cinnamon Press, 2018), which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and evolved from her writing residency with the Marine Conservation Society. Her first poetry collection, Creatures of the Intertidal Zone (Cinnamon Press, 2007), was inspired by her journey through Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland in the footsteps of an intrepid eleventh-century female Viking. A number of poems from her third collection, skindancing (Cinnamon Press, 2015), which explores human–animal shapeshifting, have been included in international poetry anthologies. Her nature-focused non-fiction also features in a wide range of anthologies and journals (such as EarthLines and New Welsh Review).