Susan Hughes

Susan Hughes is a writer and editor, and has been writing children's books and articles for nearly twenty years. Susan has always loved writing. When she was in grade five and six, she and several friends had a writing club. They would gather with their poems and stories and read them aloud to one another. It was hard to wait for the responses! The group members always tried to say one thing that was positive, along with a constructive comment. After finishing high school, Susan studied English literature at the University of Toronto. One summer, before her last year, she went to the job posting board and saw an ad: A children�s publishing house was looking for summer help from students. She answered the ad and was hired. She learned a lot that summer about writing, researching, editing, proof-reading, and working as a team. When she graduated, she worked for a year with the children�s publishing house � then began freelancing, working on her own to find editing and writing work. Soon she was getting calls asking her to do jobs such as write short articles for educational books. While she was doing this paid work, she was also working on her own ideas for books. Susan writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is often asked to write a book on a topic she knows little about! So she does lots of research and briefly becomes an expert on that subject. Sometimes she works with experts, for example when she wrote about the Megalodon, the prehistoric shark, or Titanic. She often has to do research for her fictional works as well, for example, the Wild Paws series. Susan had to learn a lot about how to care for injured or motherless wild baby animals so that she could make the books realistic and factual, as well as entertaining. Susan lives in Toronto in a tall house with a red door. She works in her living room at home. She opens the windows wide -- and sometimes the front door too! -- and sits where she can see the trees and the sunlight. She lives with her three children, her boyfriend, and his two children. One of her favourite parts of the day is when all the kids come home after school and she gets to visit with them and hear stories about their day.