About Susan
Susan Erlandson Washburn was born to pleasantly eccentric Midwestern parents who failed to indoctrinate her with conventional religious and social values. This failure, combined with the shock of a move from Wichita, Kansas to Tuscaloosa, Alabama when she was nine, led to her diverse academic pursuits: philosophy (B.A., Swarthmore college); English Literature (M.A. Stanford University); Cultural Anthropology (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley). However, she promptly deserted academia to become an editor at Psychology Today magazine and subsequently a freelance writer specializing in the behavioral sciences. Then, in the midst of a publicity tour for her book on relationships (Partners, Atheneum: 1981) she abandoned her career to move to New Zealand in pursuit of romance (having learned nothing from her own research), adventure, and spiritual enlightenment. This venture failed on all counts and she returned to the United States in 1986. She reinvented herself yet again by doing a course of study at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, after which she established a small architectural design business in New England. At present she lives in Taos NM with an oversized, emotionally needy Weimaraner.
Susan has a son and daughter from an early marriage. Both saw the folly of their mother’s ways and became physicians, married wisely, and produced five extremely above average grandchildren.
Susan has a son and daughter from an early marriage. Both saw the folly of their mother’s ways and became physicians, married wisely, and produced five extremely above average grandchildren.
