A native Minnesotan, Susan spent much of her girlhood taking long bicycle rides and walks through hilly Dakota County and along the beautiful Mississippi River valley that shapes its borders. Such excursions typically filled her imagination with poetry and story ideas. In fact, she invariably thought of herself in the third person, and she fictionalized herself in her early stories, but she relegated herself to the background as she could always invent more interesting characters to play the starring roles.

Susan Koefod is an award-winning novelist. Her Arvo Thorson mystery series debuted with WASHED UP (2011, North Star Press), which was praised by Library Journal as “a smashing debut with astute observations and gorgeous prose.” NAMING THE STARS, her young adult debut, was published by Curiosity Quills Press in September 2016. She has also widely published prose and poetry in numerous literary magazines, anthologies and online venues.

She is a winner of a 2013 Loft McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers, holds an M.F.A. in writing from Hamline University, and majored in English at St. Catherine’s, graduating in 1981.

She lives in West St. Paul, Minnesota, with her family.