Suzanne Owens
Suzanne Owens grew up in Toronto, graduated from the University of Western Ontario and received her MFA in writing from Emerson College in Boston. She has been a member of Screen Actor’s Guild and Actor’s Equity and worked as an actress in England, Canada and the United States.
Her first book, The Daughters of Discordia, is published by BOA Editions, Ltd. The A. Poulin Jr. New Poet’s of America series, 2000. It is about criminal women: the first feminists, their history, society and the laws that bound them. In it, Suzanne Owens gives poetic voice to some of the most infamous, wayward and criminal women in history. Named for the goddess Discordia, whom Zeus expelled from the heavens, the collection includes monologues from such famous daughters as Ma Barker and Cattle Kate, as well as the stories of lesser-known but no less notorious women. In the foreword to the book, Denise Duhamel writes, "Hers is a revisionist poetry…Owens frees these women to sing, some from the grave, and turns point of view on its
head."
Suzanne Owens has developed a one-woman play based on the characters in The Daughters of Discordia. Suzanne is a graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, New York City, and attended the Guildhall of Music and Drama London England. She won The Frank Cat Press, Chapbook Award, 1996 for, "Theater Poems". Her poem, Rubber Cork and Whalebone, from a full-length manuscript, "Actresses: Famous Funky and Forgotten", about the actress and the history of her art, placed first in the “Strong RX Medicine” Contest, Margie: American Journal of Poetry. Three of these poems can be seen in Fall/04Vol.3. Her poem “Cat scan, from A Hex Gathering Momentum,” placed second in The Anne Stanford Poetry Prize contest, University of Southern California Anthology, 2004. Others have appeared this year in, Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship Vol. 17; FS (Feminist Studies), the Department of Women’s Studies, University of Maryland; Kalliope; Oberon and the Comstock
Review. Her work has also appeared in Nimrod, Mississippi Review, Ploughshares, and Ontario Review. She teaches writing, literature, poetry and acting at Fitchburg State College and in the Boston area. She lives and teaches in the Boston area.