Background
Susan Albert was born on January 2, 1940, in Maywood, Illinois, United States , into the family of John H. and A. Lucille (Franklin) Webber.
Albert earned a degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
She earned a degree from the University of Illinois.
Susan Albert was born on January 2, 1940, in Maywood, Illinois, United States , into the family of John H. and A. Lucille (Franklin) Webber.
Albert grew up in downstate Illinois, attending Danville High School before moving to the nearby community of Bismarck, where she graduated. She earned a degree from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
Susan Wittig Albert became a professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin and was a university administrator at Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans and vice president for academic affairs at Southwest Texas State University. Susan has been a fulltime novelist since she left her career as a university English professor and administrator in 1985. She writes a column for Country Living Gardener magazine. Her writing career has included the "Nancy Drew" mysteries under the pen name Carolyn Keene in the 1980s.
By the 1990s, Albert wrote "Thyme of Death", her first China Bayles novel. The book was nominated for two national mystery awards, the 1992 Agatha and the 1993 Anthony in the "Best First Novel" category. The titles of all the China Bayles novels include the names of herbs and include herbal themes that invoke the title. Albert is a guest speaker at both herbal clubs and women's groups around the country. She describes her books as "cozy mysteries" because they do not contain much violence or gratuitous behavior.
Susan's earlier nonfiction work includes "Work of Her Own", a study of women who left their careers, and "Writing From Life: Telling Your Soul's Story", a guidebook for women memoirists. That book led to the founding of the Story Circle Network in 1997. She has edited two anthologies for the "Story Circle Network: With Courage and Common Sense" (2004) and "What Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest" (2007).
Albert and her husband, Bill, have also co-written "The Robin Paige Victorian Mysteries", a series of a dozen mysteries set in the late Victorian era. Albert is also the author of "The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter", a series of mysteries featuring author Beatrix Potter.
Quotations: “I’ve thought of myself as a writer ever since I could hold a pencil and make letters, but my first paid publication didn’t come until I was nineteen and began a short-lived career — three or four years — as a juvenile fiction writer. After that, I went on to college and graduate school and learned how to write literary criticism in an appropriately academic style. When enough was enough, I went back to children’s fiction and then turned to women’s mystery fiction. I enjoy the multiple challenges of writing books in a series: developing characters over time and trying circumstances, creating multi-leveled plots that link several books, and keeping the themes and ideas fresh. I also find great pleasure in working with my co-author/husband. Bill Albert, who has a strong plot sense and a fine understanding of the dynamics of character development. It is always a fascinating challenge to work together to craft a coherent narrative out of two different stories — his and mine. I am interested, as well, in women’s stories and memoirs and look forward to doing more work with that subject in a few years — perhaps my own memoir, perhaps a critical study of the development of women’s memoirs. The world is full of things to write about. I’ll never run out of projects.”
She is founder and current president of the Story Circle Network and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.
In 1986 Susan married writer William Albert and she has children by previous marriage, Robert, Robin, and Michael. Susan says that she "grew up rural" and is proud to claim farming in her family heritage. She continues to live the rural life with Bill in the Texas Hill Country, where she writes, gardens, and raises a varying assortment of barnyard creatures. She has three children, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.