Susan Somers-Willett (born 1973)[1] is an American author and academic working as a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
from Duke University, followed by a Master of Arts in creative writing and PhD in American literature from the University of Texas at Austin.
Somers-Willett is the author of two books of poetry: Quiver (Virginia Quarterly Review Series, University of Georgia Press, 2009)[2] and Roam (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Awards, SIU Press, 2006).
[3] She is also the author of a book of scholarly criticism, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America (University of Michigan Press, 2009), which was the first scholarly monograph on the poetry slam and which focuses on African American performance in slam and spoken word poetry.
[5] From 2003 to 2013, Somers-Willett was married to author and screenwriter Ernest Cline, with whom she has one child.