Susan Hawthorne

Poet, Author & Publisher

Susan Hawthorne is a radical lesbian feminist poet, novelist and theorist. She is also a publisher and co-founder of Spinifex Press with partner Renate Klein. She is the author of 29 books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction and is Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities at James Cook University Townsville. She has taught at universities in subjects such as Philosophy, Literature, Women’s Studies, Creative Writing and Publishing Studies, and has won awards in writing, publishing and in 2017 she was winner of the Penguin Random House Best Achievement in Writing in the Inspire Awards for her work increasing people’s awareness of disability.

Susan has been active in the Women’s Liberation Movement since 1973, and has had many varied positions such as volunteering at Melbourne’s Rape Crisis Centre, organized writers’ festivals, taught English to Arabic-speaking women and worked in Aboriginal education.

Her most recent books include Vortex: The Crisis of Patriarchy, In Defence of Separatism; Wild Politics: Feminism, Globalization and Biodiversity. She co-edited Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion and Women’s Liberation with Renate Klein in 2021 and her novel on violence against lesbians, Dark Matters was published in 2017. Her poetry books include The Sacking of the Muses, Lupa and Lamb, Cow, and The Butterfly Effect. Cow was a finalist for the Audre Lorde Lesbian Poetry Prize (USA) and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in the NSW Premer’s Literary Awards.