Old English belongs to us all, no matter what our background or where we come from. This proclamation rings out in a beautiful poem I’m delighted to share with you by Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, currently Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Comparative Literature and Classics at the University of Pennsylvania. Click on the Read More
Susan's Blog
World War II Woman Pilot Buried at Arlington Cemetery
November 5, 2016
Read about how WASPs, members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, can at last be buried at Arlington Cemetery. Elaine D. Harmon was interred on Wednesday, September 7, 2016, at Arlington Cemetery, the first WASP to be so honored.
Chicago and Baseball: Compassionate Community
November 5, 2016
I was excited that the Cubs won the World Series. I saw them as a kid when I went to visit my grandparents in Chicago. Baseball shows up in the diaries of my mom, Joan, in the 1930s and 1940s. It sparks a moment of communion with a young man whose leg has been Read More
Website with 1200 Years of Women Composers
November 5, 2016
Listen to over 900 pieces of music by women, including Kassia, the Byzantine abbess, and Hildegard von Bingen.
“Beowulf” Rock Operas, Appalachian Old-Time Music, Tolkien, and Philology
November 5, 2016
Learn about Beowulf Rock Operas and even an Appalachian “old time” musical, Brother Wolf .
Memorial Day: A Little Flower in the Rain
May 30, 2016
My mother, Joan, wrote about the Unknown Soldier in a poem from late May 1937 when she was 14 years old. You can trace her progress from experience–visiting the statue to an unknown doughboy in World War I as described in her diary–to her creation of a poem in honor of him.
"Put this on the syllabus next time you teach Beowulf.”
May 30, 2016
Peter J. Smith, reader in Renaissance literature, Nottingham Trent University, has just finished Susan Signe Morrison’s Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife (Top Hat, 2015). “This retelling of the Anglo-Saxon epic by one of the period’s most renowned scholars is gloomy and powerful in equal measure. Morrison names the Read More
A Literary Vacation
April 7, 2016
What books do you like that take a well-known story, but from the point of view of a woman?
New Review of "Grendel's Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife" TEE HEE
April 5, 2016
"I loved the imagery of this story. I also loved the tales of the Gods, Thor, Odin and Loki and their antics. The only problem with that for me was that every time there was a mention of Loki, I thought about Tom Hiddleston and Chris Helmsworth."
A Chick Who Reads
A Chick Who Reads