Welcome to Love of Place. Most of my work celebrates our connection to the natural world.

Most recently, my Knocking on Heaven's Door is the winner in the category of science fiction in the 2016 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards and in the category of fiction in the 2016 Arizona Authors Association Awards. A number of reviewers have been enthusiastic, including the website Geeks of Doom, which makes me smile. Not many people know me as a geek of doom! But I am happy to embrace the complexity of my personality.

I'm also so pleased that Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World has been awarded the 2016 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, as well as the 2014 WILLA Award for Creative Nonfiction from Women Writing the West.

My historical fantasy Teresa of the New World won the 2015 Arizona Authors Association Award for best Children's Literature and was a finalist for the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for Children's Literature, the WILLA Award for Children's Literature, and the May Sarton Award for Children's Literature.

These are nice landmarks in a writer's life. I would be writing regardless--but, still, whew. It's good to have some encouragement.

Feel free to contact me at http://www.sharmanaptrussell.com or through my author Facebook page, Sharman Apt Russell.


Wednesday, April 14, 2010


Two poems by Susan Rich















Unexpected Song


Thank-you for sending me back

to the page, the open notebook,


Sarajevo’s unfurled tail

along the table’s edge.


Thank-you for apricot blossoms,

beach rose and blackberry vines;


that allow bright divinations

along the nearly-absent mind.


And hats off to the green

and white ferries over-riding


time-tables, taxes, spring tides;

to the brant’s triumphant choir


casually premiering each April

above the waters of Beach Drive,


above Vashon, Bainbridge, Blake,

like a flyway to the heart.


Outside this raised window

lie early morning charms


traveling the air on blue lilac —

terrestrial and round:


the notes we are meant to sing

the possibility in each slight thing.



Ode to the Question of Blue


As in delphiniums at dusk,

berries, fish, and

calm lagoon;

as in the changing days ~

blue corn, blue ray, blue tooth.

I almost knew you once ~

blue stocking, blue devil,

blue swoon ~ but better to come

to you now through canopied

rooms, to enter the cornflower

sky ~ where I will relinquish

indigo boots and stone-washed jeans

above a river of pine ~

bluebottles, blue miles, blue sighs.

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