Biography
Suzanne Roberts is the author of the travel essay collection Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (University of Nebraska Press, October 2020) 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 and teaches for the low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University. She served as the 2018-2020 El Dorado County Poet Laureate and currently lives in South Lake Tahoe, California.
Author Headshots
Photos by Candice Vivian
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Advanced Praise for Bad Tourist
"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
—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