Dr. Susan Swartwout is Professor of English at Southeast Missouri State University, founder and publisher of Southeast's University Press, and editor of the semi-annual journals Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley (Vol. 14, Issue 1) and The Cape Rock: Poetry. She is the author of several books, editor of 6 anthologies--including the military-service literature series Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors--and has published over 100 poems and essays in anthologies, collections, and literary magazines.
Her writing awards include the Stanley Hanks Award from the St. Louis Poetry Center, New York's Rona Jaffe Foundation Award for Poetry, the Davenport Award for Fiction, a Ragdale Foundation Fellowship, and Seattle's Hedgebrook Writers Residency. She is recipient of the Governor's Award for Excellence in Education in Missouri, as well as being the first in Southeast's history to win the top two faculty awards in one year.