Susan Merson, author, theatre professional, maker, tarot counselor
Susan Merson began her career as an actress on and off Broadway, in television and film. Co-founding the LA Writers Bloc in 1985 with award winning writer Jane Anderson, she has mentored writers through the Bloc and through her private and university classes in Playwriting, Life Stories, Writing as a Spiritual Practice, Tarot for Writers and the popular VOICING Series.
Her short fiction has been featured in The Jew in America, Nice Jewish Girls (Penguin), The Worcester Review, the Chicken Soup series and several other online platforms. As a playwright, her award winning plays have been performed internationally, including her 8 solo plays featured and used as example in YOUR NAME HERE: An Actor Writers Guide to Solo Performance. (Amazon). Long form fiction available on Amazon is her award winning blog, WHEN THEY GO AND YOU DO NOT and her first novel, DREAMING IN DAYLIGHT. OH GOOD NOW THIS , her newest novel launches 2/1/21.
She is a tarot reader and counselor, a maker of quilts, clothing and whimsy. Susan is a humble mother and a proud resident of New York City.
Please email me at susan@susanmerson.com for more information
CONSCIOUS EMBODIMENT SUMMIT
Healing Trauma through Conscious Embodiment - with host Gregg Westwood
SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY
Susan on creativity and the "fifth dimension" at SUU on January 24th, 2012
AVAILABLE NOW . . .
HOW WE SAW THE MOON
Publisher's Summary
Reeling from Trump’s election, Annie Simon is thrown into a vortex of conflicting emotions as she deals with her estranged son, the stories and storytellers that come to her, and a strained friendship that cannot be sustained.
Starting over is hard enough but when ghosts decide to hitch a ride into the future—things can get complicated.
Widowed Vivi leaves California for a new start back east landing in a college town near her old friend Vikram, now the local "spiritual" leader and disappointing lover.
But the two have old business which leads them to uncovering the ghosts they conjured long before and the ones that are haunting them now.
Rose Shiner's father, Leo, a one-time carnival barker and opera producer, prefers Puccini's world to his own, peddling dinette sets to the furniture trade in the Midwest. Belle, Rose's mother, fights debilitating depression, desperate to step up from her youth on the freezing Canadian prairie to a suburban castle. Rosie struggles mightily to grow in this shadow world, fighting through nightmares to find dreams steady and safe enough to sustain her in daylight.
"Merson's writing catapults us into the early sixties with such a sense of authenticity, beauty, and grace. A natural storyteller with an actor's ear for voice and character, Merson's prose hits the reader in the center of the heart and leaves them with the feeling of having traveled a great distance to find themselves in their very own backyard."
-Jamie Cat Callan, Author, French Women Don't Sleep Alone
"Susan Merson locates the reader squarely inside her characters hearts and minds,... her narrative voice is beautiful, luxurious, poetic. Merson creates a completely realized universe; she brings her readers effortlessly inside the tapestery of human condition as she considers it."
-Barbara Bottner, Award Winning Novelist and Screenwriter
DREAMING IN DAYLIGHT now available at:
WHEN THEY GO AND YOU DO NOT:
A Blog and Plays about DYING And COMING BACK TO LIFE by Susan Merson
chronicles Susan Merson's journey through the untimely death of her husband, Tony Shultz, artist, business man, friend and father. When a surprise diagnosis of mesothelioma is delivered, Shultz asks his wife of 27 years to keep family and friends updated. INCH BY INCH: the journey of the prince is born.
The blog movingly documents the journey of discovery and fierce loving in the surprisingly short time between diagnosis and the end of their life together. Playwright and actress Merson continues documenting the healing process through her plays RECOGNITION and CARLA TELLS US WHAT HAPPENS as experience turns to memory. WHEN THEY GO AND YOU DO NOT, her most recent solo play, completes the first cycle of healing for the wife turned widow. And opens the door to what's next.
WHEN THEY GO AND YOU DO NOT Now available at:
YOUR NAME HERE
Publisher's Summary
An essential bare bones guide to getting your own solo play into the world! For actors, writers and public speakers of all kinds. Award winning and veteran actress, writer and producer SUSAN MERSON brings over thirty years of theatrical experience to YOUR NAME HERE: An Actor and Writer¿s Guide to Solo Performance. **step by step acting and writing techniques**examples and discussion of six different forms of solo plays**exercises and questions to deepen your work**new monologue material**marketing strategies and production basics
