Biography
Suzanne Roberts is the author of Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties (March 2022), the award-winning travel essay collection Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel, and the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award), as well as four books of poems. Named "The Next Great Travel Writer" by National Geographic's Traveler, Suzanne's work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays and included in The Best Women's Travel Writing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, The Normal School, River Teeth, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in literature and the environment from the University of Nevada-Reno, teaches in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University, and lives in South Lake Tahoe, California.
Author Headshots
Photo by Lauren Lindley
Praise for Animal Bodies |
Photo by Candice Vivian
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“Suzanne Roberts’ essays are eloquent and vibrantly imaginative. They are lyrical in the best sense: the language is rhythmic, pulsing on the page, but they are never poeticized, flowery or vague. Roberts’ wisdom and humor are evident throughout. I so welcome a collection of her essays, all in one place.
— Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard Is True and In the Lateness of the World
“I have been thinking about one particular Suzanne Roberts essay, “Breaking the Codes,” since I first read it. Sometimes, I open a closet door and my stomach drops, remembering one painful scene in her essay. Sometimes I see a group of teenagers and I wonder, and worry, about all of them. Roberts’ writing rearranges me in some fundamental and necessary ways. A book like this, a book by her, is a book I desperately need.”
— Camille T Dungy, Author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers and Editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Poetry
"Animal Bodies is a marvel, a heartbreaking road map of living, loving, and grieving. Roberts bravely recalls the deaths of her alcoholic father, her dear friend, and her mother, a complex force in her life. Here, we read about rape, escape, affairs, and repair. There is wilderness and then, somehow, the clearing--both in her world travels and the dying around her. Thinking about death clarifies life, and Roberts knows the thin line between grief and joy, the importance of living fully and fighting for freedom without apology. This is hard-earned wisdom and liberation. I can't stop thinking about it."
— Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower and Gardening Secrets of the Dead
“No one travels the depths of place and experience more phenomenally than Suzanne Roberts. In these essays that explore being, beauty, desire, death, and our collective animal journeys on the planet, Animal Bodies gathers our questions about life and brings them to the only place where meaning might emerge: adaptation. This book is a triumph that transcends human and gives us a chance to re-story ourselves into the larger world.”
— Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water
"In Animal Bodies, Suzanne Roberts offers surprising insight, both intimate and universal, into death, desire, and how we all move through this difficult world. Her essays are ruthless, beautiful, graceful, and endlessly fascinating. A wonderful book."
— Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire
“The essays in Animal Bodies unflinchingly yet so importantly meditate on loss and grief. As readers, we are fortunate to experience such stories of survival. They are poignant testimonies of passion, honesty, pain, and grace. I grieve for the young woman in each of us who, like Roberts, navigated a world of treachery, of love, and of double standards. Here, we travel with Roberts to beaches in Florida, to hospital rooms for chemotherapy, to Nashville Honky Tonks, and to the Amazon Rain Forest. We suffer with her the loss of family and dear friends. With us she carries to each of the locations her acute insight and her courageous and uncompromising desire to witness and record the world. Because these truths are the truths of so many, this is a book to be read by us all.”
— Didi Jackson, author of Moon Jar
"These essays soar like falcons and dive octopus deep; they carry the power and agility of tigers, the intelligent play of cetaceans. These essays are alive with lyricism and humor, thrumming with pain and pleasure and the complex spaces we inhabit between. Suzanne Roberts is a wonder and a force."
— Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis and Many Restless Concerns
"Roberts’ language and reflections are also startling in their honesty and perceptions. Some of her sentences stop the reader cold. Roberts’ writing and this book are gifts to the reader." —Morgan Baker, Hippocampus
“'What can you live without? Everything. Nothing.' Suzanne Roberts sums up and digs deep into the inescapable awkwardness and exquisiteness of being human in this collection of gut-wrenching, and cackle-inducing, essays. This book will live on my bedside table." — Ashleigh Renard, author of Swing
— Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard Is True and In the Lateness of the World
“I have been thinking about one particular Suzanne Roberts essay, “Breaking the Codes,” since I first read it. Sometimes, I open a closet door and my stomach drops, remembering one painful scene in her essay. Sometimes I see a group of teenagers and I wonder, and worry, about all of them. Roberts’ writing rearranges me in some fundamental and necessary ways. A book like this, a book by her, is a book I desperately need.”
— Camille T Dungy, Author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers and Editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Poetry
"Animal Bodies is a marvel, a heartbreaking road map of living, loving, and grieving. Roberts bravely recalls the deaths of her alcoholic father, her dear friend, and her mother, a complex force in her life. Here, we read about rape, escape, affairs, and repair. There is wilderness and then, somehow, the clearing--both in her world travels and the dying around her. Thinking about death clarifies life, and Roberts knows the thin line between grief and joy, the importance of living fully and fighting for freedom without apology. This is hard-earned wisdom and liberation. I can't stop thinking about it."
— Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower and Gardening Secrets of the Dead
“No one travels the depths of place and experience more phenomenally than Suzanne Roberts. In these essays that explore being, beauty, desire, death, and our collective animal journeys on the planet, Animal Bodies gathers our questions about life and brings them to the only place where meaning might emerge: adaptation. This book is a triumph that transcends human and gives us a chance to re-story ourselves into the larger world.”
— Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water
"In Animal Bodies, Suzanne Roberts offers surprising insight, both intimate and universal, into death, desire, and how we all move through this difficult world. Her essays are ruthless, beautiful, graceful, and endlessly fascinating. A wonderful book."
— Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire
“The essays in Animal Bodies unflinchingly yet so importantly meditate on loss and grief. As readers, we are fortunate to experience such stories of survival. They are poignant testimonies of passion, honesty, pain, and grace. I grieve for the young woman in each of us who, like Roberts, navigated a world of treachery, of love, and of double standards. Here, we travel with Roberts to beaches in Florida, to hospital rooms for chemotherapy, to Nashville Honky Tonks, and to the Amazon Rain Forest. We suffer with her the loss of family and dear friends. With us she carries to each of the locations her acute insight and her courageous and uncompromising desire to witness and record the world. Because these truths are the truths of so many, this is a book to be read by us all.”
— Didi Jackson, author of Moon Jar
"These essays soar like falcons and dive octopus deep; they carry the power and agility of tigers, the intelligent play of cetaceans. These essays are alive with lyricism and humor, thrumming with pain and pleasure and the complex spaces we inhabit between. Suzanne Roberts is a wonder and a force."
— Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis and Many Restless Concerns
"Roberts’ language and reflections are also startling in their honesty and perceptions. Some of her sentences stop the reader cold. Roberts’ writing and this book are gifts to the reader." —Morgan Baker, Hippocampus
“'What can you live without? Everything. Nothing.' Suzanne Roberts sums up and digs deep into the inescapable awkwardness and exquisiteness of being human in this collection of gut-wrenching, and cackle-inducing, essays. This book will live on my bedside table." — Ashleigh Renard, author of Swing
Praise for Bad Tourist
"In this collection of essays, Roberts recounts her adventures while traveling mostly solo to 15 countries. Along the way she navigates mishaps both large and small, from a dangerous mudslide in Peru to a tricky romantic entanglement in Greece. Each experience offers a chance to probe her inner 'bad tourist,' as she wrestles with issues of privilege, cultural blind spots, and her own insecurities on a journey to self-discovery."--National Geographic
"Replete with harrowing and laugh out loud accounts of misadventures at home and abroad, Suzanne Roberts’s Bad Tourist collects entertaining stories from around the world. . . . Authentic, surprising, and irresistible, Bad Tourist is a travel text worth getting lost in."
--Foreword Reviews
"Roberts has spent decades circling the globe, chasing experience, understanding, and identity. This book is the culmination of her young adulthood on the move."—Courtney Eathorne, Booklist
"Named Next Great Travel Writer by National Geographic’s Traveler, Roberts handily fits the distinction with memories, images, and insights that put readers in the seat beside her or hiking up a too-close-for-comfort volcanic slope—all the while providing a sort of anti-guidebook unapologetically illustrating what not to do."—Donna McCrohan Rosenthal, News Review
"I love travel, armchair and otherwise, so I knew it would be a pleasure letting Suzanne Roberts take me around the world on a shoestring, from India's Grand Elephant Festival, to the steppes of Mongolia on the trail of Genghis Khan, to the cool tiles of one or another one-star bathroom wondering if this would be the time she'd puke herself to death. Even more satisfying is her honesty, courage and eventual clarity, as she tackles her own understories--family dysfunction and alcoholism, internalized misogyny, and what the climate catastrophe means for the travel addicted among us--combining these essays into a throughly relatable journey of the heart."
—Pam Houston, author, of Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country
“If Michel de Montaigne and Chelsea Handler could get together in a bar in some far-flung part of the world and get good and drunk, they might dream up a book like this. This is not your parents’ travel writing! If you’re thirsting for a literary triple shot of sex, booze, and misadventures, Bad Tourist is your passport to an adventure you won’t want to come home from.” --Michael P. Branch, author of Rants from the Hill and How to Cuss in Western
“I’m breathless after this trip around the globe with Suzanne Roberts. Bad Tourist makes beautiful the absurdity and heartbreak accompanying us whenever we leave home. Roberts’ intimate, fiercely honest narrative voice imbues these realities with grace and demonstrates just how much is to be gained by living a life in present tense.” --Kathryn Miles, author of Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake
“Suzanne Roberts’ journey—both inward and outward—is illuminated by eloquent portraits of countries, cultures, and compassionate insights into human nature. I love this book.” --Ann Marie Brown, Travel Writer and Guidebook Author
“These thoughtful, hilarious, lusty essays will either have you renewing your passport or blowtorching it for good. Suzanne Roberts may be a bad tourist, but she’s one hell of a great writer.” --Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis
“In an age where cultures, people, and places are so easily objectified, reduced to abstractions, commodities, or statistics, Bad Touristis a collection that returns us, thankfully, to earth. Across India and Mongolia to Mexico and California, Suzanne Roberts shares the view at ground level, the brutality and grace and sometimes transcendence in the lives of everyday people. She reminds us that travel can be an act of remembrance. This is an important and moving work.” --David Miller, Travel Writer and Documentary Filmmaker
"Replete with harrowing and laugh out loud accounts of misadventures at home and abroad, Suzanne Roberts’s Bad Tourist collects entertaining stories from around the world. . . . Authentic, surprising, and irresistible, Bad Tourist is a travel text worth getting lost in."
--Foreword Reviews
"Roberts has spent decades circling the globe, chasing experience, understanding, and identity. This book is the culmination of her young adulthood on the move."—Courtney Eathorne, Booklist
"Named Next Great Travel Writer by National Geographic’s Traveler, Roberts handily fits the distinction with memories, images, and insights that put readers in the seat beside her or hiking up a too-close-for-comfort volcanic slope—all the while providing a sort of anti-guidebook unapologetically illustrating what not to do."—Donna McCrohan Rosenthal, News Review
"I love travel, armchair and otherwise, so I knew it would be a pleasure letting Suzanne Roberts take me around the world on a shoestring, from India's Grand Elephant Festival, to the steppes of Mongolia on the trail of Genghis Khan, to the cool tiles of one or another one-star bathroom wondering if this would be the time she'd puke herself to death. Even more satisfying is her honesty, courage and eventual clarity, as she tackles her own understories--family dysfunction and alcoholism, internalized misogyny, and what the climate catastrophe means for the travel addicted among us--combining these essays into a throughly relatable journey of the heart."
—Pam Houston, author, of Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country
“If Michel de Montaigne and Chelsea Handler could get together in a bar in some far-flung part of the world and get good and drunk, they might dream up a book like this. This is not your parents’ travel writing! If you’re thirsting for a literary triple shot of sex, booze, and misadventures, Bad Tourist is your passport to an adventure you won’t want to come home from.” --Michael P. Branch, author of Rants from the Hill and How to Cuss in Western
“I’m breathless after this trip around the globe with Suzanne Roberts. Bad Tourist makes beautiful the absurdity and heartbreak accompanying us whenever we leave home. Roberts’ intimate, fiercely honest narrative voice imbues these realities with grace and demonstrates just how much is to be gained by living a life in present tense.” --Kathryn Miles, author of Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake
“Suzanne Roberts’ journey—both inward and outward—is illuminated by eloquent portraits of countries, cultures, and compassionate insights into human nature. I love this book.” --Ann Marie Brown, Travel Writer and Guidebook Author
“These thoughtful, hilarious, lusty essays will either have you renewing your passport or blowtorching it for good. Suzanne Roberts may be a bad tourist, but she’s one hell of a great writer.” --Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis
“In an age where cultures, people, and places are so easily objectified, reduced to abstractions, commodities, or statistics, Bad Touristis a collection that returns us, thankfully, to earth. Across India and Mongolia to Mexico and California, Suzanne Roberts shares the view at ground level, the brutality and grace and sometimes transcendence in the lives of everyday people. She reminds us that travel can be an act of remembrance. This is an important and moving work.” --David Miller, Travel Writer and Documentary Filmmaker
Praise for Almost Somewhere
“Almost Somewhere is Robert’s introspective and no-holds-barred account of that journey and the interactions between the three women. What emerges is a revealing and insightful coming-of-age portrait of women of the post baby boom generation....The dialog, the imagery, and the story are so well done and so absorbing that men and women of all generations will find it a satisfying and fulfilling literary treat.” —Ron Watters, National Outdoor Book Award
“Suzanne Roberts sets off on a remarkable Sierra journey that will test the limits of physical endurance, of friendship, and of faith in self. . . . This is not the usual wilderness story of independence, competition, and violence. Here, thankfully, is the more urgent story of intimacy, community, and compassion. A loving, and lovely, ode to life.” —John T. Price, author of Not Just Any Land
“In Almost Somewhere we get to travel both the physical John Muir Trail—its history, its flowers and trees and shadowy peaks—and the gritty emotional landscape of the three women who make the journey. Where are we in the world, anyway? Suzanne Roberts helps us know that the only place we can be is here, giving it all we have, day by day.”
—Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvořák
“Roberts dares to combine a hiking adventure with a healthy dose of humor and female bonding in all its complicated and turbulent best. . . . An utterly refreshing outdoors memoir free of the seemingly manufactured drama so many similar titles contain. A delightful and quite literary diversion.” --Colleen Mondor, Booklist
“Suzanne Roberts sets off on a remarkable Sierra journey that will test the limits of physical endurance, of friendship, and of faith in self. . . . This is not the usual wilderness story of independence, competition, and violence. Here, thankfully, is the more urgent story of intimacy, community, and compassion. A loving, and lovely, ode to life.” —John T. Price, author of Not Just Any Land
“In Almost Somewhere we get to travel both the physical John Muir Trail—its history, its flowers and trees and shadowy peaks—and the gritty emotional landscape of the three women who make the journey. Where are we in the world, anyway? Suzanne Roberts helps us know that the only place we can be is here, giving it all we have, day by day.”
—Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvořák
“Roberts dares to combine a hiking adventure with a healthy dose of humor and female bonding in all its complicated and turbulent best. . . . An utterly refreshing outdoors memoir free of the seemingly manufactured drama so many similar titles contain. A delightful and quite literary diversion.” --Colleen Mondor, Booklist