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Journalism & Essays

Swan's journalism has appeared in American, British and US publications. She started as education reporter for The Toronto Telegram in l967 in the era of student protest after working as a cub reporter on the Midland Free Press in 1961-1963. She went on to write for the Toronto Star and for television with TVO, the CBC as well as performance pieces in collaboration with others. Her controversial performance art includes a show about Barbara Ann Scott titled “Queen of the Silver Blades” and “Down and In” about self pity. Susan continues to contribute essays and is commissioned for her journalism in recognition of her keen insights, incisive interviews, and her ongoing activism in the community of writing and social awareness.

A complete bibliography is available by downloading Swan’s Curriculum Vitae in the section
About Susan Swan, which includes detailed information in the following categories:

   • Samples of book reviews written by Susan Swan
   • Material written for television and film by Susan Swan
   • Samples of essays and features written by Susan Swan
   • Selected readings and cultural exchanges
   • Talks by Susan Swan


Recent Articles

Pop Rules, Banff, July 2009
Like it or not pop rules. Its power is reinforced by the Internet and a digital, electronic media, which creates a media-scape as influential as the natural landscapes of forests, grasslands and mountains were to our pioneer ancestors. But many of us remain skeptical of pop culture. If you are like me, attracted by pop's energy, you may feel schizophrenic because you enjoy a good mindless Hollywood action movie while still feeling let down by its banality and lack of substance.

Although I am a fan of pop, I am also one of its sternest critics because as a novelist, my tradition is literature with its ties to Gutenberg and the world of print.

But as Susan Sontag points out in “Notes on Camp” there is no better person to talk about a cultural phenomenon than somebody with “a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.” So I offer the following Notes on Pop as an homage to Susan Sontag who once famously said that camp converts the serious into the frivolous.

Locating Myself in the Casanova Craze, BookShorts, August 2005

You can't go home again, National Post, June 18, 2005

Love secrets from Casanova, MSN: Match.com website, July, 2005

 

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