BOOKS
Trouble Ahead: Dangerous Missions with Desperate People (2019)
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Stories of a woman’s fifteen solo journeys to places that, for awhile, riveted public attention because of their terrifying and elaborate violence: Rwanda, Darfur, the slums of Kenya. Witness, enabler and critic, Susan worked just outside the corporate web of humanitarian aid. Her journals explore ‘what happens after’ a crisis – the grief, resilience, and astonishing aspirations of people struggling to recover. She reveals, through unblinking observations, the nuances of cultures and tragedies that have defined the world of humanitarian relief Out of these missions grew the author’s inspiration for Women’s Centers International, a movement to respond to the global wildfire of women’s needs.
An excerpt from this book is published in “Everything Intensely” – the 2022 Writing Contest Anthology of the San Francisco Writers Conference. www.SFWriters.org
REVIEWED BY C.E. Flores Loved it!
In the Borderlands (2000)
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Enter the world of Dr. Nona Whitley: a border camp overflowing with refugees from the Rwanda genocide, a place where fear is the daily ration and survival requires an accomplice.
When All the Girls Stopped Singing (publication in 2023)
When her mother dies, Zora Monroe, a spokeswoman for a human rights organization, uncovers the secret of her adoption. The shock of discovery fuels her decision to find blood relatives. Her journey to the homeland with an experienced but duplicitous guide takes her inside a burgeoning genocide where she must decide the fate of a young girl.
Cast amid nation-shattering events, When All the Girls Stopped Singing is a deeply personal story of a woman’s struggle to redefine family and to navigate the confounding path of human responsibility.
Susan received the 2004 Maryland Writers’ Association First Place Prize for Mainstream Fiction for an early version of this novel.
SHORT STORIES
Her short stories and essays have been published by World Press Institute Online, Wild Child Magazine, Pictures and Stories, MS magazine, and Global Women Magazine as well as included in several anthologies.
Hackles, published in the anthology Grace and Gravity, Fiction by Washington Area Women (Gargoyle Press, 2004)
Finding Jazz received the Sheila Smith Short Story Prize, 2002
A new collection of flash fiction due out in Spring 2022
ESSAYS
- The Good News in Darfur: Women’s Work Global Woman Magazine, December 2010
- The Hope of Darfur MS Magazine, Fall 2007
- Sweet Sixteen: A Ritual for the New Age, Washington Woman, Spring 2005
- Kenya Kronicles published in the anthology Gargoyle 54, 2004
- Numb and Number: America’s Turbulent Affair with Denial, Pictures and Stories, 2003
- Bike Speed included in the anthology Bicycle Love, 2003
- Reports of Genocide, The World Press Institute, 2002
- Videography Magazine, a monthly column of essays on ethical and business issues for television professionals published from May 1998 to September 2001
Susan Burgess-Lent 