About

Susan Cerulean is a writer, naturalist, and activist based in Tallahassee and Indian Pass, Florida.

Her forthcoming book, If This Were a Map will be published by Apalachee Press in 2026.

She has published three award-winning works of nonfiction with the University Press of Georgia: I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird: A Daughter’s Memoir (2019); Coming to Pass: Florida’s Coastal Islands in a Gulf of Change (2015), and Tracking Desire: A Journey after Swallow-tailed Kites (2005).

Cerulean directed the Red Hills Writers Project (2004-2011). With Janisse Ray and Laura Newton, she edited Between Two Rivers: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf. This locally acclaimed anthology brought together personal essays written by 29 of the area’s foremost writers and naturalists.  In 2010, she edited Unspoiled: Writers Speak for Florida’s Coast, with Janisse Ray and A. James Wohlpart, alerting Floridians to perils of oil drilling in the Gulf.

In March 2009, she was honored by Tallahassee Community College as one of the “Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet,” and in 2023, was chosen for Women Among Us: Portraits of Strength.

She designed Florida’s Nongame and Watchable Wildlife programs and was named Environmental Educator of the Year by the Governors Council for a Sustainable Florida.

Susan was born and raised in the Appalachian foothills of northern New Jersey. Just as those mountains shed their quartz and feldspar to create our continent’s sandy shores, they tumbled her down their long spine to a small green island on Florida’s Gulf coast.  With her husband, climate scientist Jeff Chanton, she divides her time between Tallahassee and Indian Pass, pursuing activism, writing, and communion with wild birds. They have three adult children, two marvelous grandsons, and an elderly gray cat named Oakie.