Susan Hayden is a multigenre writer. She is the author of Now You Are a Missing Person, a memoir in poems, stories and fragments, published by Moon Tide Press. It was a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Book of 2024, after having received the Kirkus Star.
Hayden's book made the Shortlist for the Memoir Prize for Books, was an Eric Hoffer Award Finalist, a National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist, a Readers’ Choice Book Award Finalist and a Finalist in the Zibby Awards 2023 for Best Coming of Middle/Old Age book, awarded by Zibby Owens. And it was a 2024 Finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards in 3 categories: Grief/Hardship, Poetry, and Women’s Non-Fiction. Now You Are a Missing Person was selected for the Best of 2023: Fiction & Literature from Los Angeles Public Library, as selected by library staff. Additionally, it was the Winner in the Poetry category and Winner in the Wild Card category from Southern California Book Festival.
She has been published in the anthologies Look What I Did About Your Silence (El Martillo Press, 2025); From Venice to Venice (El Martillo Press, 2024); Beat Not Beat (Moon Tide Press); Los Angeles In the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine (Rare Bird Books); The Black Body (Seven Stories Press), I Might Be The Person You Are Talking To (Padua Playwrights Press) and elsewhere.
She is the creator, curator and producer of Library Girl, a monthly literary series. Originating in 2009 at Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica, CA, the show celebrates the written word and features some of the boldest voices in Los Angeles: poets, essayists, novelists, playwrights and musicians.
In 2015, she received the Bruria Finkel/Artist in the Community Volunteerism Award from the Santa Monica Arts Foundation, for her “significant contributions to the energetic discourse within Santa Monica’s arts community.”
Hayden is also a playwright. Her work has been produced at The MET Theatre, Padua Playwrights’ Festival, Mark Taper Forum’s Other Voices, The Lost Studio, South Coast Repertory's Nexus Project, Ensemble Studio Theatre's WinterFest, The California Studies Council, and Café Plays at the Ruskin.
She is the proud mother of singer-songwriter Mason Summit, who performs with Irene Greene in the Americana duo, The Prickly Pair. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband, music journalist Steve Hochman.
Author Photo: Alexis Rhone Fancher
