Suzanne Ondrus

Suzanne Ondrus is a poet whose work explores cultural identity and the human dramas that shape and transcend it. Her poems delve into desire, different cultures, history, racism, and women’s sexuality. She won the 2013 Reed Magazine Markham Poetry Prize and was also the runner-up for the Little Red Tree 2013 International Poetry Prize. 

Language and cultural immersion shape Suzanne’s artistic vision; she has worked in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Russia, Benin, Ghana, Uganda, Italy, and Germany. As a 2018-2020 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso in West Africa, she taught creative writing, African literature, literary theory, and American studies at Universite Pr. Ki-Zerbo in the nation’s capital, Ouagadougou. She is fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, and German. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University; an MA in English from Binghamton SUNY; a BA in International Business and Management from Wells College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Connecticut, with a focus on African women’s epistolary novels and techniques of intimacy. 

Her poems are in Wanderlust, New Square, Reed Magazine, The Long River Review, Slab, Frigg, Colere, JENDA, Route7, CV2, and Visitant.  See poems in  S/tick from her historical domestic violence project involving an 1881 German Ohio immigrant couple. You can hear her poems on her YouTube channel, Suzanne Ondrus, follow her on Twitter: SuzanneOndrus and find her updates on suzanneondrus.com.