Developmental Editor / Author
Susan Schmidt, PhD
(252) 269-0032
Beaufort Writing Group / Kakapo Press
Listed among Top Ten Editors in New England. Master stylist. “Sharpest improvement I've ever seen from 1st to 2nd draft.” Structural critique: clarify, polish narrative tone and trajectory. Style and copyeditor: academic and popular science and history, journal articles, dissertations, novels and memoirs. Kakapo Press has published six books.
Editorial Freelancers Association
Beaufort NC Writers Retreat Rental
Listen or read 2015 Public Radio interview on Song of Moving Water
Listen or read 2006 interview on Landfall along the Chesapeake
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In Beaufort, Susan surveys shorebirds and dolphins, weeds gardens, and walks beaches with her Boykin Spaniel Pippa. She worries about King Tides, sea level rise, and melting glaciers, but doesn’t want to move inland from the ocean. |
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In Let Go or Hold Fast, Beaufort Poems, Susan Schmidt celebrates neighbors—dolphins, manatees, sharks, herons, egrets, butterflies, ants, bees, possum, snake, owl, and bear. As she swims, paddles, rows, and sails, she witnesses coastal diversity and resilience, threatened by sea level rise, motorboat wakes, tourists. The new poem describes Hurricane Florence’s damage, recovery, and toxic aftermath. |
Susan retraced Smith’s 1608 voyage and her family’s 400 years on the Chesapeake. Landfall is a cruising guide for boaters and a field log for naturalists. Scientists and citizens share hopes and despairs for the Bay’s fisheries. She walks her ancestor’s farm, now a chemical dump, and climbs a great-grandfather’s lighthouse. Her book weaves history and ecology, weather and seamanship. |
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In her young-adult novel Song of Moving Water, Susan Schmidt writes about river and forest ecology, bluegrass music, square dancing, chestnut trees, quilting, endangered species, cooking, and environmental organizing. |
In Salt Runs in My Blood, Susan Schmidt writes poems about moving from dark into light as she plays in boats and walks long trails. She remembers bright parrots, big trout, gales at sea, glaciers, peach pie, old loves, Celtic ancestry, Civil War battlefields, and learning to navigate. |
Susan Schmidt, PhD (252) 269-0032
| © 2012 Susan Schmidt. All Rights Reserved. |
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