Susan Snively

Biography

Susan Snively, PhD, is the author of four books of poetry: From This Distance (Alice James, 1981), Voices in the House (Alabama Poetry Series, 1988), The Undertow (University of Central Florida, 1998), and Skeptic Traveler (David Robert Books, 2005). She has taught at Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and Amherst College and has received fellowships from the NEA and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. For 27 years, she directed the Writing Center at Amherst College and is the Associate Dean of Students. She earned her BA from Smith College and her MA and PhD from Boston University. Dr. Snively has given readings and lectures at the Salem Athenaeum, Marlboro College, University of Louisville, Wesleyan University, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Monadnock Lyceum Lecture series in Peterborough, NH, and elsewhere. A guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Snively wrote and narrated the films “Seeing New Englandly,” and “My Business is to Sing,” produced by Ernest Urvater, in the series “Angles of a Landscape.” She regularly leads discussions on various aspects of Dickinson for the museum’s monthly poetry group. Her first novel, The Heart Has Many Doors, about Dickinson’s love affair with Judge Otis Phillips Lord, was published in February 2015, by White River Press. She lives in Amherst with her husband, Peter Czap.