Susan J. Atkinson is an award-winning teacher and poet. She was born and raised in Northern Staffordshire, England and now makes her home in Ottawa, on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. After fifteen years of being an elementary school teacher, her life has come full circle and she has returned, part-time, to the film industry, often working alongside her filmmaker husband. Most recently she was named Honourable Mention in The New Quarterly’s 2023 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest and was Longlisted for Exile Edition’s 2023 Ruth and David Lampe Poetry Award. Her long-listed suite, Alice, Circa 1985, retitled Alice In The City, will be published as a chapbook in 2025 by Anstruther Press. Her work has appeared in journals, anthologies and online. Atkinson’s debut collection, The Marta Poems was published by Silver Bow Publishing in 2020. Her second collection, all things small, also from Silver Bow, was released in April 2024. Atkinson also writes stories and poetry for children and is the author of four picture books published by Little Witch Press.