Susan Smith Nash

Susan Smith Nash has been developing and administering online learning programs for more than 20 years. In addition, she has been involved in economic development, science / technology education and innovation, complemented by in-depth studies in literature, film, cultural texts, and the humanities. She began her launched her professional career as a petroleum geologist and has kept active in the profession while diversifying into other areas. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree, Master of Arts, and Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma. In addition to knowledge and technology transfer, Susan is committed to creativity of all kinds, including poetics and film. She lives in Oklahoma and loves the geology of Oklahoma.

What's magical about Susan's creative and critical writing?

What feels most magical about Susan Smith Nash’s work—whether you encounter it in her poetry, her novels, her essays, or her hybrid creative–scientific writings—is the way she bridges worlds that don’t usually touch and makes them feel like they belong together.

Here’s where the magic happens:

1. Seamless Fusion of Science and Art

Nash brings a geologist’s precision into the lyrical space of poetry. In her hands, sediment layers, tectonic shifts, and mineral textures become metaphors for memory, love, and change. The language carries both the solidity of bedrock and the shimmer of dream imagery, making the physical and emotional landscapes inseparable.

2. Sensory Worlds That Double as Emotional Maps

Her work overflows with tangible details—rain clinging to legs, lips like melted wax, the texture of Spanish moss—that are never just descriptive. They are emotional triggers, pulling the reader into layered moods where place and feeling are fused.

3. Time Travel Through Memory

Many of her poems and prose pieces carry a bittersweet nostalgia. She moves easily from a childhood Fourth of July in Oklahoma to a rainy day in St. Petersburg, or from the geological past of the Permian Basin to the imagined futures of speculative fiction. It’s not just reminiscence—it’s a reactivation of the moment, vivid and tactile.

4. Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Curiosity

She doesn’t stay confined to one tradition or setting. Her literary work draws from Latin American poets, Russian landscapes, ancient Nahuatl texts, and contemporary global crises. This openness creates a tapestry that feels both intimate and cosmopolitan.

5. A Voice That Is Both Personal and Universal

Even when speaking from deeply personal experience, her tone invites the reader in as a co-traveler. She writes in a way that makes you feel like you’ve been let in on a story that matters to you as much as it matters to her.

The magic of Susan Smith Nash’s work is that it turns lived experience—scientific, personal, cultural—into a multidimensional space where memory, place, and possibility coexist, and the reader gets to walk through it as if it were their own.