Susan J. Atkinson is an award-winning teacher and poet born and raised in Northern England. After fifteen years working in the Toronto film industry, she now makes her home in Ottawa, Ontario, where she and her filmmaker husband have raised their four daughters. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Arc Poetry Magazine, The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, Grain Magazine, The New Quarterly, Queen’s Quarterly, and Room Magazine.
She was an Honourable Mention in The New Quarterly’s 2023 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest and her suite, Alice, Circa 1985 was long listed for Exile Edition’s 2023 Ruth and David Lampe Poetry Award. Alice, Circa 1985, will be published in 2025 by Anstruther Press in 2025. She has also won the Carleton University Literary Contest and the Canadian Authors Association’s National Capital Writing Contest.
Other awards include first place in The Carleton University Literacy Competition, Honourable Mention in ARC Magazine’s Diana Brebner contest and Notable Mention in The New Quarterly’s 2020 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest.
The Marta Poems published by Silver Bow Publishing in 2020 was Atkinson’s debut collection. In its earlier stages the collection received Ontario Art Council Recommender Grant nominations from ARC magazine, Guernica Press, The New Quarterly and Palimpsest Press. In 2016 a suite from the collection was shortlisted for Exile’s Gwendolyn MacEwen Award and The Tree Chapbook Contest. Poems also won the Sawdust Series Poem-Off in May 2016. In 2015 Atkinson was named one of Ottawa’s Hot New Voices by The Tree Reading Series.
Atkinson’s second major collection, all things small was released in Spring 2024. It, too, was awarded Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grants during its early stages. Atkinson also has a chapbook, The Birthday Party, The Mariachi Player and The Tourist. Originally published by Catkin Press in 2021, the book was reprinted in 2023.
Alongside these accolades Atkinson was one of 14 poets featured in the League of Canadian Poets “Tending the Fire” Chapbook, published in April 2020, and one of the Marta Poems was first published in The Heartwood Anthology, by The League of Canadian Poets.
Susan also writes poetry and stories for children and is the author of 4 picture books published by Little Witch Press (www.littlewitchpress.com)
Susan J. Atkinson 