Suzanne Ondrus’ work explores cultures, identity, history, gender issues, racism, and women’s sexuality. Her first book, Passion Seeds, won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women, and its contest judge, Richard Harteis, in an introduction to the book writes: “These poems speak to both what we want to keep invisible, such as shame and racism and speak to what we want visible, desire and love. … Ondrus taps into both the dream world and reality so that the invisible becomes visible and audible.”

Changes: Suzanne was the 2013 Reed Magazine Markham Poetry Prize winner, a 2017 UNESCO World Book Capital featured poet in Guinea, Conakry, a 2018-2020 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso, West Africa, and will be a 2022-2023 English Language Fellow to Nigeria. Her book, Death of an Unvirtuous Woman, is about a real story of domestic violence in a German immigrant couple in 1881 in Wood County, Ohio (near Toledo); this book is available from Finishing Line Press.

One of Suzanne’s proposed teaching projects includes creative writing in the foreign language being studied, such as Spanish, French, or Italian. Creating artistic works in foreign languages empowers students and shows them that a language is alive. Language and cultural immersion shape Suzanne’s own artistic vision. She speaks French, Spanish, German, and Italian fluently, and is conversant in Slovenian, Russian, and Moore (a language of Burkina Faso). She has written poems in French, Spanish, and Italian. She has worked in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Russia, Benin, Ghana, Uganda, Italy, and Germany and can present cultural exposure programs in conjunction with her poetry that traces the history of transcontinental desire from Burkina Faso, to Benin, to Russia, and to Ohio.

Another proposed teaching project she offers is speaking on racism, sexism, gender issues, or domestic violence with her poetry on these subjects. Poetry often serves as a vehicle to open conversation on difficult or taboo topics. She has taught women’s studies, sexual harassment training, queer studies, creative writing, and edited poetry, film scripts, and fiction manuscripts. She holds a PhD from the University of Connecticut, an MFA from Bowling Green State University, and an MA from Binghamton University.

Suzanne has been honored to be invited as a featured reader from the Slovenian Consulate in Cleveland February 2024, where she shared her poems on her Slovenian heritage. Summer 2023 Suzanne was an Ohio Parks Teaching artist. She designed lessons on how trees are like humans; haibun & hiking; meditation, writing, & connecting with nature; and public writing in the parks activities. Through one of her workshops on domestic violence, she was honored to have a group of women share about their friend who was murdered by her boyfriend and thrilled to collaboratively write with these women “Reclaiming Virago” in retaliation to victim blaming.

Click here to Suzanne talk about her work on the Bloom Where you Are Planted podcast.

Availability

Upon request

RECENT PROJECTS: Ondrus’s Death of an Unvirtuous Woman was performed as a play at Cleveland Public Theater’s Pandemonium – September 2023

Arts in the Parks Residency, Teaching Artist – Summer 2023. All ages workshops bringing together nature and creative writing.

Featured reader at Ray McNiece’s Tongue & Groove – May 2024.

Guest lecturer, Bowling Green State University (2023)