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Professor Susan Rudy

Positions held:
  • Associate Lecturer A, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Susan Rudy is a writer and academic. Internationally recognised for her work on gender and experimental writing, she is the author or editor of four books and dozens of journal articles, book chapters, special issues, opinion pieces, and reviews. Based in Canada until 2011 when she moved to London, her first poems were published in the 1980s. In 1988, she completed a PhD at Toronto’s York University and took up an academic position at the University of Calgary, where she served until 2016 and is now Professor Emerita.

    Since 2016, she has served as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London directed the Centre for Poetry (2018-2022) and founded the Centre for Contemporary Writing (2022-2023) and the Queer Poetics Research Network (2018). In collaboration with Dr Georgina Colby at the University of Westminster, she founded and ran SALON - LONDON: a site for feminist experiment (2016-2023).

    Recent publications include ‘A Queer Response to Caroline Bergvall’s Hyphenated Practice’ in Reading Experimental Writing (2020) and ‘Gender’s Ontoformativity’ (2021) in Feminist Theory. Poetry, creative nonfiction, and public-facing work may be found at Politics/Letters Live, many gendered mothers, and The New Statesman. Work in progress includes Hand Over, a work of experimental life writing. 

    Highlights

    • In addition to her work at Birkbeck, she is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London where she directed the Centre for Poetry (2018-2022) and was the founding director of the Centre for Contemporary Writing (2022-2023). 

      Work in progress includes 'Who cares if there are no women? An intergenerational conversation about parenting beyond the gender binary,' a book chapter co-authored with Hannah Silva, forthcoming in Revolutionizing Motherlines (Toronto: Demeter Press, 2025). 

      In 2024-25 she holds a Leighton Artists Studios Residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Banff, Canada, where she will be completing the penultimate draft of Hand Over, a work of experimental life writing. 

      Her books include Writing in Our Time: Canada’s Radical Poetries in English (2005) and Poets Talk (2005), both co-authored with Pauline Butling. Recent publications include ‘A Queer Response to Caroline Bergvall’s Hyphenated Practice’ in Reading Experimental Writing (2020) and ‘Gender’s Ontoformativity: Reclaiming queer women’s solidarity through experimental writing’ (2020) in Feminist Theory.



    Office hours

    By appointment. Email me to set up a meeting via Teams or in person: s.rudy@bbk.ac.uk.

    Qualifications

    • PhD, York University, 1988
    • MA, University of New Brunswick, 1985
    • Honours BA, Wilfrid Laurier University, 1984

    Web profiles

    Visiting posts

    Professional activities

    Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London (2016-present)

    Leighton Artists Studio Resident, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff Canada (2024-2025)

    Professional memberships

    • Member, Modern Languages Association

    Honours and awards

    ORCID

    0000-0002-7910-0973
  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • gender
    • experimental writing
    • poetry
    • creative non-fiction

    Research overview

    Susan is a writer and academic.  In addition to her work at Birkbeck, she directs the Centre for Poetry and is a Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London and an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia.

    Her books include Writing in Our Time: Canada’s Radical Poetries in English (2005) and Poets Talk (2005), both co-authored with Pauline Butling. Recent publications include ‘A Queer Response to Caroline Bergvall’s Hyphenated Practice’ in Reading Experimental Writing (2020) and ‘Gender’s Ontoformativity: Reclaiming queer women’s solidarity through experimental writing’ (2020) in Feminist Theory.


    Recent poetry, creative nonfiction, and public-facing work may be found at Politics/Letters Live, many gendered mothers, and The New Statesman. Work in progress includes Identifying Women, her first book of creative non-fiction.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    Research projects

    Queer Openings: Reading, Gender, Experimental Writing

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Poetry Workshop 2: The Open Page (AREN143S6)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book Section