Susan Knox

Susan Knox is a CPA, financial planner, and has a long association with higher education. She taught cost accounting at Franklin University and served in various administrative positions at The Ohio State University. She left Ohio State to start her own CPA firm specializing in financial planning. After moving to Pacific Northwest, Susan turned her attention to writing. She lives in Seattle with her husband, just north of the Pike Place Market, where she enjoys a view of Elliot Bay and the gustatory riches of the market. Her essays and fictions have been published or are forthcoming in CALYX, Forge, Melusine, Pisgah Review, Monkey Puzzle Magazine, and Sunday Ink.

Artist Statement

When I moved to Seattle in 1996, I began work with a career counselor. I knew I wanted to do something different from my previous life in finance and accounting, change direction, work in a more creative way, but it was difficult to find my way. After months of meeting with the counselor, I remembered an incident from my childhood. My parents could not afford books, but I always looked forward to the Bookmobile that arrived at our country school every six weeks and my father drove my sister and me to town every other Friday to select books from the Minerva Public Library. We always left carrying as many books as we could manage and we read them all.

One summer afternoon, I was reading and I had a revelation. It hit me like a wallop. I ran down to the basement where my mother was ironing and said, “Mommy! I know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m going to be a writer.” My mother, lost in her own thoughts, didn’t hear me, didn’t answer me, and I went back upstairs thinking maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. But I remember the feeling I had—that knowing that came from a different place. A knowing that seemed sure and true.

This memory floated to the surface fifty years later and I realized what I wanted to do with the last third of my life; I would become a writer. I would study writing, read in a wider range, find good teachers, and associate with dedicated writers. This is what I have done since 2000 and now I have a book published and four personal essays published, and three flash fiction pieces published and a few encouraging rejection letters and I write every day.