susan cohen

I'm a journalist and poet who lives in Berkeley, California. I have been, among other things, a newspaper reporter, a contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine, and a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California.

Word Tech/​ Cherry Grove will publish my first full-length book of poems, "Throat Singing," in March 2012. Look at Poetry News on my site, or at the Cherry Grove Collections catalog for more information.

"Normal at Any Cost" has won The National Association of Science Writers 2010 Science in Society Award! One of the judges praised the book: "excellent and in-depth reportage, interestingly and breezily written, on an important (and to me, overlooked) medical/​scientific issue. It has pretty much everything I look for: attention to the scientific process, human interest, a strong and consistent narrative."

"Normal at Any Cost; Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height" by Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove was published by Tarcher/​Penguin in March, 2009.

"Normal at Any Cost" won a book award from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. It was an Editor's Pick in November, 2009, in Choice Reviews and a Women's Bioethics Bookclub selection. It is a Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2009, and was among Library Journal's Best Picks of 2009 in consumer health books. The New York Times called it "irresistible."

"Finding the Sweet Spot,poems by Susan Cohen" was published by Finishing Line Press in March, 2009.

I received a Pushcart Prize nomination from poet Kim Addonizio for some of the work included in "Finding the Sweet Spot."

The poem "The Woman Who Feels No Fear" won the 2011 Rita Dove Poetry Award from Salem College's Women's Writing Center.

Recent poems have appeared also has poems in Atlanta Review (International Publication Prize winner), CALYX, Canary (online), Oberon, Pearl, Poetry East, River Styx (an International Poetry Contest winner),and Southern Poetry Review, as well as on the Broadsided website and four anthologies: Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon Poetry), Mamas and Papas (City Works Press), Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2011, and From the Well of Living Waters (Kehilla Synagogue). Poems are forthcoming in California Quarterly, Greensboro Review, Nimrod (finalist for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize), Oberon, and "Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women's Poetry" (Scarlet Tanager Books).

Other publications where poems have appeared include: Alehouse, Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Connecticut Review, Ekphrasis, New Millennium Writings,Poet Lore, Poetry International, Puerto del Sol, Seattle Review, Sow's Ear Review, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, and Verse Daily.

The first full-length poetry manuscript, "Dreaming on A Hard Mattress" (alternatively titled "Throatsinging") was a finalist for the 2010 Richard Snyder Publication Prize at Ashland Poetry Press, and for the ABZ First Book Contest, as well as semi-finalist at Sixteen Rivers Press.

My profile of Dr. Abraham Verghese appeared in the January/​February 2009 Stanford Magazine, and can be read online.

"Survival," which appears in "Finding the Sweet Spot," won a New Millennium Writings Award for Best Poem in 2006.

"Two Ways," a poem from "Backstroking," was featured on Verse Daily in December, 2005.