Susan Southard holds an MFA in Literary Nonfiction from Antioch University/Los Angeles, where she was the recipient of the Eloise Klein Healy Scholarship. For her book, Nagasaki, Susan has received three awards, including the Arizona Commission on the Arts 2008 Individual Artist Project Grant; the Bill Desmond the 2008 Bill Desmond Writing Award, a monetary award for the best nonfiction Individual Artist Project grant application; and a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc.

Susan is the founder and artistic director of Essential Theatre, internationally known for its innovative work in the field of theatre and social change, now in its twenty-first season. With Essential Theatre, she has performed in thousands of interactive theatre performances and conducted workshops for audiences of all ages and backgrounds across the country. She has also presented over thirty seminars and workshops at state, national, and international arts conferences.

Susan also teaches creative writing for incarcerated women in a federal prison outside Phoenix. Her essay, "Afterlife," adapted from Nagasaki, was one of two runners-up in Hunger Mountain's 2009 Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize and appears in the current issue of Hunger Mountain.

Susan lives in Tempe, AZ with her daughter, Eva Black.