Susan came back to live in Cumbria after living and working in Yorkshire for forty years. She taught English & American Literature at the University of Leeds before moving into the voluntary sector and community development work including roles with the Alzheimer's Society, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Over the past ten years Susan has worked across the county and further afield, engaging with groups as part of Wordsworth Grasmere's community outreach programme: giving talks, running pop-up poetry sessions and delivering creative workshops, including regular writing sessions and developing Poetry & Paint approaches with painter Alison Critchlow (a reflective, experimental format that has prompted some fascinating work by participants in a wide range of settings).