Susan Suntree
AUTHOR

Susan Suntree

Politics & Social Sciences
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Susan Suntree is a writer and performer whose work investigates the dynamics of science, art, and spiritual philosophies as they engage contemporary life. She has presented her award-winning poetry and performances nationally and internationally, and has published books of poetry, biography, and creative nonfiction, as well as translations, essays, reviews, and book chapters. Her father was a radio personality in New Mexico and Colorado before being"discovered” and moving to Hollywood in the 30s to follow his dream of being a movie star. Eventually, after trading his movie work for a steadier income, he and Suntree’s mother started family life in the new suburb of Arcadia. Suntree also lived occasionally with her grandparents in California’s high desert Antelope Valley. Her one-woman performance-poem, Origins of Praise, commissioned by and premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York, describes the way the desert landscape, her grandparents’ attention to the natural world, and her exposure to Native American cultures deeply influenced her sensibility. Her performance work has also included street theatre featuring puppets and masks and focused on local environmental challenges especially saving and restoring the Ballona Wetlands. In her recent book, Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California (University of Nebraska Press 2010), Suntree draws from Western science and indigenous myths and songs to tell the epic story of how Southern California region came into being beginning with the Big Bang/Great Silence. In his forward, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder describes writes that it is “a work that sings.” The celebrated novelist Carolyn See has praised it as a “glowing monument” and “an absolutely unique work of art.” Suntree also gives performances, readings, lectures and tours highlighting the prehistory and sacred geography of Southern California. Composer Adrienne Albert set as a choral work Suntree’s adaptation as a poem of the United Nations Declaration Of Human Rights (The UNDHR: A Choral Quilt of Hope” 2010). Her book of poetry, Eye of the Womb (Power Press 1981) about the birth of her daughter was recently published in Madrid as a bilingual edition, El Ojo de la Matriz (Vision Libros 2010) and a selection published in the journal Piedra del Molino: Revista de Poesia (No 12, Spring 2010). In the introduction, Beatriz Villacañas writes: “In Eye of the Womb, the wisdom of the womb's eye is full of beauty, or better yet, impregnated with beauty. Plenitude and pain are resolved and integrated in magnificent verses.”
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