Poet, essayist, and playwright Susan Griffin was born in Los Angeles, California. An early awareness of the horrors of World War II and her childhood in the High Sierras have had an enduring influence on her work, which includes poetry, prose, and mixed genre collections. A playwright and radical feminist philosopher, Griffin has also published two books in a proposed trilogy of “social autobiography.” Her work considers ecology, politics, and feminism, and is known for its innovative, hybrid form. Her collections in this vein include Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen (2008); The Book of Courtesans: A Catalog of their Virtues (2001); What Her Body Thought: A Journey into the Shadows (1999); The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender, and Society (1995); A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (1982), which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award, won a BABRA Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book; and Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978). In addition to her numerous books on society and ideas, Griffin has written several volumes of poetry, including Bending Home: Selected and New Poems 1967–1998; Unremembered Country (1987), which won the Commonwealth Club’s Silver Medal for Poetry; Like the Iris of an Eye (1976); and Dear Sky (1971).
The recipient of many honors and awards, Griffin was named by the Utne Reader as one of 100 important visionaries for the new millennium. She has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and she received a Macarthur Grant for Peace and International Cooperation. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. Griffin lectures widely in the United States and abroad, and has taught at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Pacifica Graduate School, the Wright Institute, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2012 she was the Bayard and John Cobb Peace Lecturer at the Naropa Institute.
