Susan Doherty Hannaford

Susan Doherty is an award-winning Canadian author, researcher, keynote speaker, and advocate whose work explores resilience, mentorship, trauma, and the extraordinary power of human connection. Educated at Concordia University and the University of Toronto, she began her career at Maclean's magazine before founding and leading a successful advertising production company for more than two decades.

Her debut novel, A Secret Music, won the Word Guild Grace Irwin Award for Best First Novel. Her memoir, The Ghost Garden, received the Quebec Writers' Federation Mavis Gallant Prize and chronicles her remarkable search for the anonymous British man whose bone marrow donation saved her life. Her latest novel, Monday Rent Boy, has won the Canadian Book Club Award for Best Fiction and the Word Guild Award for Best Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. Through an unforgettable childhood friendship, it examines the lasting consequences of trauma, silence, mentorship, and the moral responsibility of bystanders.

Susan is a ten-year stem cell transplant survivor whose essays and public speaking have inspired audiences in Canada and internationally. She has delivered keynote addresses on literacy, resilience, and the transformative role of teachers and mentors, encouraging others to recognize how one relationship can change the course of a life.

For fourteen years, Susan volunteered at the Douglas Institute, working alongside people living with severe mental illness, and she continues to advocate for children and young people experiencing trauma, as well as for greater understanding of mental health. She has also taught creative writing to women facing addiction, homelessness, and mental health challenges, helping them discover the healing power of storytelling.