Journalist, feminist, novelist, activist, teacher, Susan Swan's impact on the Canadian literary and political scene has been far-reaching. Susan Swan's critically acclaimed fiction has been published in twenty countries. Swan's last novel, What Casanova Told Me, was published by Knopf in Canada (hardcover September 2004 and paperback 2005) and in the US by Bloomsbury (hardcover 2005 and paperback 2006). It has also been published in Spain, Russia, Serbia and Portugal.
Swan's sixth book of fiction, What Casanova Told Me, links two women from different centuries through a long-lost journal about travels with Casanova in the Mediterranean. It celebrates travel as a form of love. What Casanova Told Me was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region). It was a Globe and Mail Best Book; a Calgary Herald Top 10; a Now (Toronto) Top 10; and a Sun Times (Owen Sound) Top 10; and Asked For Adams was named one of Maclean's Top 5 literary characters for 2004. Swan shares a Puritan background with her heroine Asked For Adams. A branch of Swan's family immigrated to America in 1635 and settled near Boston before moving to Canada two centuries later.
Recent essays by Swan have appeared in the new Carol Shields anthology, Evocation and Echo, edited by Aritha Van Herk and Conny Steenman-Marcusse, Barkhuis Gronigen 2009 and The First Man in My Life(daughters write about their fathers) edited by Sandra Martin and re-issued by Penguin Canada 2009.
Essays by Swan have also appeared in Reader's Digest: A Father's Legacy, June 2009; The Globe and Mail, Mary Swann: mystery solved, April 25 2009; Granny Boots; Some grandmas just aren't the knitting kind, Fashion, May 29 2009. Swan's essays have also appeared in the PEN anthology Writing Life 2006 and Dropped Threads, Random House, Canada 2003.
Swan's 1993 novel, The Wives of Bath, (about a murder in a girls' boarding school) was a finalist for the U.K. 's Guardian Award and Ontario's Trillium Award, and was recently picked by a U.S. Readers' Guide as one of the best novels of the nineties. A feature film based on The Wives of Bath was released in the summer of 2001 in the U.S. and Canada under the title Lost and Delirious. The film was shown in 32 countries, and picked for premiere selection at Sundance and Berlin Film Festival 2001.
Swan's other novels include The Biggest Modern Woman in the World, based on a true-life ancestor, a giantess who exhibited with P.T. Barnum, which was a finalist for Canada's Best First Novel Award and the Governor General's Award for Fiction. The Last of the Golden Girls, about the sexual awakening of young women in an Ontario beach resort, was originally published in 1989, and was recently reissued in hardcover. Her collection of short stories, Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With was published in 1996. Two of its stories were published in Granta and in Ms. Magazine.
Swan has retired from her position of Associate Professor of Humanities at York University. In 1999-2000, she was awarded the Millennial Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies. As chair, she hosted the successful Millennial Wisdom Symposium in Toronto featuring artists and social scientists debating the ways the past is recreated in popular culture and what wisdom the past has to offer as we move into the new century. The symposium was inspired by her research into her book about Casanova.
She was chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2007-2008) and brought in a new benefits deal for Canadian writers. She is also a member of Community Air, the Toronto civic activist group that has fought against the building of the bridge to the Toronto Island Airport.
A native of southwestern Ontario and graduate of McGill University, Susan Swan makes her home and garden in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood.
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