Book Signing : Susan Nusbaum

“Alive in This Place”

The poems in this collection travel across lifetimes, each twist and turn of the outer world reflecting an inner landscape, narratives unfolding against ever-changing backdrops— places, seasons, decades. They trace the complexities of an ordinary life through the histories and environments that gave them shape—shifting from homes and tree-lined neighborhoods, to a rain-soaked cemetery, an opera house in Hanoi, a beach in Ceylon, a village in Poland. In them are the contradictions and surprises, moods and modulations of individual experience, evoking both the transitory nature of our world and the timelessness of the human condition.

Born in Rochester, NY, Susan Dworski Nusbaum received her BA from Smith College and her law degree from the University of Buffalo Law School. She lives in Buffalo NY where she has worked as a musician, teacher, arts administrator, and most recently as a criminal prosecutor. Her poetry collection, “What We Take With Us,” released by Coffeetown Press in 2014, was a finalist in the Brittingham/Pollack Prize Competition. Her second poetry collection, “Open Wide, the Eye,” was released June 1, 2016. (Coffeetown Press). Her third book, “Alive in this Place,” will be released July 1, 2019.

Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Connecticut Review, Poetry East, Nimrod International Journal, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Chautauqua, Harpur Palate, Woven Tale Press, Calliope (June 2020), Wisconsin Review, The Sow’s Ear, Earth’s Daughters, The Buffalo News, and A Celebration of Western New York Poets, (2014).

A participant in the Chautauqua Institution Writers’ Festivals and Chautauqua Writers’ Center poetry workshops, Susan served on the Board of the Chautauqua Literary Arts Friends. She has presented her work in solo public readings in numerous communities, including Buffalo NY, Rochester NY, Washington DC, Chautauqua NY, and Sarasota FL.