Suzanne Power

Suzanne was born in 1968, into a family of postmen. A voice from the adult word said that writers did not earn a living, but journalists did. So Suzanne set her cap at that profession. She entered it at the age of 16, writing letters to newspapers. Some were published. She went to college and went on to have a career as a print and television journalist, presenter and producer in Britain, Northern and Southern Ireland. She has worked for Fleet Street, BBC, London Weekend Television, women’s magazines, Ulster Television, RTE, the Irish national broadcasting station. She has been a Features Editor, a primetime presenter, a producer. In 1994 she phoned in sick one day and wrote 5,000 words on an ex prisoner and an ex nun called Broken Teapots. It was one of the winners of the prestigious Fish Short Story Competition which attracts entries from all over the world. Roddy Doyle was the judge that year. The following year she was short-listed in the same competition, judged by Germaine Greer. Then she got rejected a few times. Then she got distracted by journalism. She wrote a book on women’s well being which was very well received. Being You allowed her to interview women from all walks of life about the natural conditions of their existence and the strength and hurt and inspiration they drew from it. Her first novel, The Lost Souls’s Reunion was well reviewed and published in a number of different countries. Factual work has always allowed her to explore people – young and old. She has heard all their voices. Now they carry characters that belong to stories she is putting down. She got sick and had to resign from mainstream journalism. It took two years of stillness for her to work this out, but she has done so. She is back to active life, but has not announced her arrival since two boys arrived at the same time in 2001 and she is kept busy looking after them. She is consumed with interest for people and the world. This has led to some extraordinary situations, like the head of immigration in Northern Pakistan sending musicians to serenade her at dawn, taking her to no rules polo games, bending over backwards to get her into China across the Khunjerab Pass. Taking a mouth rather than mind-altering substance in a Borneo longhouse with a group of cackling women who insisted on stripping her naked and dressing her in full ceremonial gear. Her tongue was not working, so she could not object. Her then father-in-law fielded written proposals of marriage from an ardent tribesman who eventually grew threatening. She was shot at in the Australian outback, having been mistaken for a rabbit. She saw ghosts at the top of Asia’s highest mountain and a man died of stab wounds in front of her in Cambodia. She lived in the back of a car for three months and has spent a night alone in the wilderness banishing ghosts. She writes a column for the Evening Herald on Friday’s and for a decade she was the profiles writer and literary editor of IT Magazine and reviews. She’s also been a columnist for Ireland on Sunday, Woman’s Way and U magazines over the past decade. She makes regular appearances on radio and television to talk about oddities. They pay her for this and she still cannot figure out why. She is a profile writer, this has given her the opportunity to meet everyone from FW de Klerk to Isabel Allende. Her short stories and travel writing have been published in a number of different anthologies. She lives with her partner, a special needs education expert and lecturer in early childhood education and care. They have twin boys