Susan Swan is a novelist, journalist and one of York University's most prestigious public intellectuals. She is the author of six books of fiction including The Wives of Bath, a finalist for Ontario's Trillium and the Guardian Fiction Award in the UK.

 Her most recent novel, What Casanova Told Me, was nominated for the 2004 regional Commonwealth Prize and as a Globe and Mail, Now Magazine and Calgary Herald best book for 2004. (more information on the reception to that novel can be found here)

What Casanova Told Me was just published June 2005 by Bloomsbsury US; it came out in paperback with Vintage Canada June 2005. Foreign rights have since been sold to France, Russia and Spain.

First published by Knopf Canada September 18, 2004, it is a Mediterranean odyssey about the search for renewal, pleasure and inspiration from the past – a story that has as its counterpoint, the travelers of the eighteenth century who sought truth and beauty in the ruins of Greece and Rome. The novel is based on the journals of Asked For Adams, the fictitious cousin of former American president John Adams who traveled with Casanova during the last years of his life. It celebrates the unexpected in life and travel as a form of love.

Swan's novels and short stories have been published in twenty countries, including Canada, the U.S., Germany, Poland, Spain, the U.K., Australia, Italy and Holland. One of her novels, The Wives of Bath, was a finalist for the Guardian Fiction and Ontario's Trillium. US publisher is Knopf; Granta is its UK publisher. The Wives of Bath was recently picked by a US reader's guide as one of the best novels of the nineties.

A film based on her novel, The Wives of Bath, about a murder in a girls' boarding school, was released July 6, 2001 in the U.S. and July 27, 2001 in Canada under the title Lost and Delirious. The film has been sold to 32 countries; US movie critic Roger Ebert gave it a rave in his Chicago-Sun Times Review. Director was award-winning Lea Pool; screenplay was by Canadian playwright, Judith Thomson. The film was picked for premiere selection at Sundance and Berlin Film Festival 2001.

Since the debut of Lost and Delirious, the novel has gone on to have a third life on websites around the world in which web users act out the roles of Paulie and Mouse and Tory in internet role playing games.

Swan's novel about a giantess who exhibited with P.T. Barnum, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World, was a finalist for Canada's Best First Novel Award and the Governor-General's Award for Fiction. It was recently published in Spain (fall 2003) and the editors at Losada, the Spanish publishers, have just sent it to film director Pedro Almodovar with the hope that he will co-partner a Canadian-Spanish production with Toronto's Triptych Media. In 2001, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World, was reissued by Key Porter with a new afterword by the author.

New editions of The Last of the Golden Girls were also reprinted by Key Porter Canada in 2001. The Last of the Golden Girls, was first published in the U.S. by Arcade of Little Brown (1990) Swan's short story collection, Stupid Boys Are Good to Relax With, was published in l996. Stories from this collection were excerpted in l996 fall issues of Granta and Ms. magazine. The collection is a lively look at short-term relationships partly set in cyberspace.

More Information about Swan

Swan has given talks at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the University of Bologna, Italy; the University of Athens, Greece; the Adelaide Writers' Festival in Australia, and at Stratford's Shakespearean Festival on The Taming of the Shrew.

Susan Swan was nominated as the fiction writer representing Canada in the Berlin Literary Festival 2003. The festival celebrated cultural diversity in literary cultures around the world. A screening of the feature film Lost and Delirious, based on Swan's novel, The Wives of Bath, was part of the conference.

Susan Swan is an associate professor in the Division of Humanities at York University. In l999-2000, Swan was awarded the Millennial Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies. As chair, she hosted the successful Millennial Wisdom Symposium in Toronto featuring eighteen novelists, historians and archeologists talking about the way 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 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. She was co-chair last fall of Vote Toronto, an organization that surveyed political candidates for the mayoralty race that ended with a David Miller victory. On June 16, 2004, she was one of the speakers at an Actra Press Conference in Toronto calling for the need for federal candidates to support more Canadian televison and films on Canadian screens. Earlier this year, she spoke and performed street theatre at a press conference organized by The Writers' Union of Canada protesting Bill C-12, which recommended removing 'artistic merit' as a defense against child pornography charges. The protest succeeded in delaying passing of the Third Reading of the bill.

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