Susan Swan - Career

Career

Swan is a writer and journalist who was also a performance artist from 1975 to 1979, performing odes on subjects like self-pity and figure skater Barbara Ann Scott. But she is best known for her critically praised fiction, which has been published in twenty countries. Gender is often a theme in her earlier books, which examined the dilemma of inhabiting a female body in a male-dominated Western culture. One critic called her “a contemporary Charles Dickens” while another critic, The New Yorker writer James Wood, said her novels belong to the category of “the avant-garde of content,” a term Wood uses to describe his belief that the progressive development of fiction writing now centers on the subject matter a writer chooses to explore. Swan’s latest novels have expressed a young woman’s longing for fatherly love.

Her sixth and last book of fiction, What Casanova Told Me, links two women from different centuries through a long-lost journal about travels with Casanova in the Mediterranean. It celebrates travel as a form of love. What Casanova Told Me was published by Knopf in Canada (hardcover September 2004 and paperback 2005) and in the US by Bloomsbury (hardcover 2005 and paperback 2006). It was also published in Spain, Russia, Serbia and Portugal.

What Casanova Told Me was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region). It was a Globe and Mail Best Book; a Calgary Herald Top 10; a Now (Toronto) Top 10; and a Sun Times (Owen Sound) Top 10; and Asked For Adams was named one of Maclean’s Top 5 literary characters for 2004. Swan shares a Puritan background with her heroine Asked For Adams. A branch of Swan’s family immigrated to America in 1635 and settled near Boston before moving to Canada two centuries later. What Casanova Told Me was made into Canada’s first five-minute bookshort by film producer Judith Keenan. It also inspired the song “What Casanova Told Me” by Albertan folk singer Cori Brewster who recorded it on her 2007 album Large Bird Leaving.

Swan’s 1993 novel, The Wives of Bath, (a darkly humorous tale about a murder in a girls’ boarding school) was a finalist for the UK’s Guardian Fiction Prize and Ontario’s, and was picked by a U.S. Readers’ Guide as one of the best novels of the 1990s. A feature film based on The Wives of Bath was released in the summer of 2001 in the U.S. and Canada under the title Lost and Delirious. The film starring Piper Perabo, Jessica Paré, and Mischa Barton was shown in 32 countries, and picked for premiere selection at Sundance and Berlin Film Festivalin 2001.

Swan’s other novels include The Biggest Modern Woman in the World, based on a true-life ancestor, a giantess who exhibited with P.T. Barnum, which was a finalist for Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. The Last of the Golden Girls, about the sexual awakening of young women in Ontario cottage country, was originally published in 1989, and recently reissued in hardcover. Her collection of short stories, Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With was published in 1996. Two of its stories were published in Granta and in Ms. Magazine.

Swan is currently finishing work on her forthcoming novel The Hockey Killer, publication date to be announced. Her novel, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World, is currently being adapted for stage by Hannah Moscovitch for The Shaw Festival Fiftieth Anniversary in 2011.