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Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty-year writer who works in all genres. Currently, she has focused on playwrighting. Her play The Crooked Heart, concerning painter Jackson Pollock, had a staged-reading at the Irish Repertory Theatre in autumn, 2022. www.susantepper.com/theatre. Several other plays are making the rounds in NYC and Ireland. Tepper has been named a “Brand Ambassador” for The Galway Review. She has published 11 books of fiction and poetry. Several new novels will be released later this winter and on into the year. Her many awards include a Pulitzer Prize Nomination, over 20 Pushcart Nominations, a Winner in the Francis Ford Coppola Award for the Novel (2003), Second Place Winner in Story/South, and other honors. Her short stories aired at NPR, and were staged at Inter/Act Theatre in Philadelphia. Before taking up the writing life, Tepper worked as a method actor, professional singer with several known rock and country artists, a cable TV producer for Time Warner, flight attendant for TWA, Marketing Manager at Northwest Airlines in NYC, interior decorator, rescue worker and more. This varied life, Tepper believes, has done a lot to inform her writings.

Susan Isla Tepper

Bushwhacked

At the end of the sorrow
there lies a road
bushwhacked blazing blue
A shade
shown only in dreams
so bright
they’d blind a person—
drag them to their knees.
Only dogs can take it
and certain species of birds.

— Susan Isla Tepper