Susan Smily

Susan Smily, during her 25 years in the classroom, was an author, publisher, and workshop leader in elementary science education in Canada, Australia, and the United States (acquiring a gray hair for every student she taught). She created her own business for the development and production of a wide range of elementary education materials, worked as a writer, editor, and consultant with several educational programs, and made presentations at over 40 school and district professional development days. She was also once the Science Teacher of the Year (cover girl) for Boreal Science Supply Catalogue and as a result had coffee stains on her face in every high school in Canada.

She taught workshops for the International Women’s Writing Guild for seven years. She is also the author of “Pianissimo,” a one-act play that was presented off Broadway on April 13-15, 1998, in the Festival of Collective Voices, at the Harold Clurman Theatre in New York City.

She has traveled extensively in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Far East. She developed an interest in metaphysical studies in the early 1990s and has since become involved in studying many areas of spirituality, including Native American, Vedanta, and Kabbalah. She is also an energy reader and “psychic diagnostician.”

Smily and Honora Finkelstein are co-authors of the Ariel Quigley mystery series and the accompanying Killer Cookbook series, as well as of the stand-alone thriller "Walk-In". In 2007 they won the “Love Is Murder” Readers’ Choice Award (the Lovey) for Best First Novel and that same year were nominated for an Agatha Award. Referring to themselves as the “Jewish-Irish comedy team” (Smily is Jewish and Finkelstein is Irish), they are currently at work on a new mystery series.