Susan M. Tiberghien

One Year to a Writing Life, Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's Art and craft
One Year to a Writing Life opens the door to the writing life, taking the readers on a twelve month journey to discover and develop their own distinct voice. Covering the different literary genres, each lesson dovetails inspiration and instruction, offering a comprehensive approach to the art of writing.

Tiberghien's strategies have been tried and tested by her fifteen years of teaching. Her format is flexible--the twleve lessons can lead the reader along the one year path, or they can be adapted for individual rhythms. Featuring vivid examples fromliterary masters--such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Eduardo Galeano, Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams, and Orhan Pamuk--along with guided exercises, Tiberghien offers skills applicatble to any kind of writing, from authentic dialogue to masterful flash fiction.

Whether you're a beginner looking to find your own voice or an established writer looking for new inspiration, One Year to a Writing Life is an essential book of wisdom for anyone wishing to embrace and explore creativity in everyday life.

"Susan Tiberghien provides a clear, affectionate, and truly inspiring window into the world of writing in her new book, One Year to a Writing Life" --Lee Gutkind, Creative Nonfiction

"Tiberghien's advice, encouragement, and wisdom make this an invaluable book for writers at all stages of their writing lives." --Michael Steinberg, Fourth Genre.

"One Year to a Writing Life is the most illuminating and exciting book I have read about the journey to a life in writing." --Marcia Mead Lèbre,Director Paris Writers' Workshop.

Looking for Gold, A Year in Jungian Analysis
Daimon Verlag, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 1997

Here is the search for wholeness, for bringing together the visible and the invisible. The author calls is "seeing with her eyes closed."

Tiberghien shares one year of dreams, analysis, daily life. A writer, mother, woman in love, she enters her inner world, experiencing vertigo and breathlessness, until she lets the light and darkness fuse within her.

"Looking for Gold is a laboratory for artists, dreamers, and all who seek for ways to realize their true gold." Robert Bosnak,The Little Course in Dreams

"Tiberghien is a writer...Looking for Gold tells a gripping tale that will inspire anyone who hears soul’s subtle invitation and sets out." Kathleen Packard, Contemporary Contributions to Jungian Psychology

"In her insightful Looking for Gold, Tiberghien writes several books in one: an autobiography, an exploration of the writing process and an account of being a lay student of C.G. Jung’s work." Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle

Circling to the Center, One Woman’s Encounter with Silent Prayer
Paulist Press, New York/Mahwah, N.J., 2001

Susan Tiberghien tackles the spiritual memoir to luminous results. While her style is contemplative, she reflects on earthy matters, her childhood summoned up the by death of her father, her marriage to a Frenchman and moving away to Europe, her parenting an adopted child, her caring for an aging mother-in-law.

The author draws from Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, and incorporates themes from Taoist, Hindu, Sufi, and Native American cultures, along with insights of Jungian psychology.

"Everyone who yearns for a deeper life of prayer will delight in this book... The story rings true; it is not speculation about life, but life itself breaking through words." William H. Shannon, Silence on Fire

"Beautifully written and illusrated, this ecumenical document of sharing can inspire each of us to follow our own path of contemplation and prayer." Robert Hinshaw, C.G. Jung Institute, Kusnacht, Switzerland

"This is a wonderful book on prayer, engaging and penetrating...This thought-provoking, prayer-provoking book is surprising in its ability to speak to the individual reader and call forth our own desire for God." Spiritual Book News

Footsteps, A European Album, 1955-1990
Xlibris, Philadelphia, 2004

"Susan Tiberghien's poetic memoir evokes a life fully lived and closely observed. In elegant prose and poetry, she presents the landscapes of her time with gentle humor and a generous spirit. The rooftops of Grenoble, the hills above Lago Maggiore, Geneva in its white fog, are the settings for a French-American romance, an international domestic tale, full of children and laughter, and at the end a new direction and revelation. Footsteps is a wise book and a pleasure to read."
Peter Meinke, The Piano Tuner, Zinc Fingers

"In this album of wonderfully witty and poignant essays, S.Tiberghien captures stories from thirty-five years of family life in Europe. The collection describes a love story and from that matrix a meditation about many kinds of love. Light and dark days, funny and momentous ones are celebrated as faith and an energetic capacity for friendship define the family's cross-cultural path. The pages fly by and before we know it, the six children have grown. In the new silence, familiar footsteps insist that she write."
Wallis Wilde-Menozzi, Mother Tongue, An American Life in Italy

A Baroque Sunset, In Memory of Amy Clampitt

"Amy was teaching her first poetry workshop and longed for distraction from her jittery nerves. We talked about zinnias and sparrows, about Manhattan and Geneva. We talked about voyages, about southern France, the Italian lakes, 'imaginary Italy, the never-never vista, framed, of Stresa on Lago Maggiore...'"

A Baroque Sunset was written for International PEN in memory of Amy Clampitt.
Read the essay in "The Circle Continues," gathered by Judith Duerk (Innisfree Press,Philadelphia, 2001).

Living in Two Languages
"When I married a Frenchman and moved to France, I slowly slipped into a French-speaking pattern. Only when the children grew up and left home, did I have the space to venture back to an English-speaking pattern. It took awhile to adjust and make the edges fit, then one day I found myself American once again. Pierre appreciates the variable metamorphosis, like having both wife and mistress. And I have the choice, will I live the coming day in French or in English?..."

This essay was first published in the Christian Science Monitor. Read it in one of the following anthologies: "Cupid's Wild Arrows," edited by Dianne Dicks (Bergli Books, Basel, Switzerland, 1993); "Two Worlds Walking," edited by Diane Glancy & C.W. Truesdale, (New Rivers Press, Minneapolis,1994; "A Woman's Europe," (Travelers' Tales, 2001).

Swaying

"When I waved goodbye, my parents said, "Don't fall in love with a Frenchman!" I laughed and said, "Of course not." I arrived in the fall, fresh out of college, with years of French behind me, only to discover that I couldn't pronounce the name of the place where I was going. Grenoble. Or rather I couldn't pronounce it the French way.... People would look at me and say, "Pardon?" They made it sound like another place. I said Grenoble, they said Pardon..."

Published in "Swaying, Essays on Intercultural Love," edited by Jessie Carroll Grearson & Lauren B. Smith (University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1995).

Home Is Where We Are
"...Home is where we are. Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century mysic, wrote that Holy Spirit is the way to Connectedness. Today, nine centuries later, the links and networks that we create speak to this. As expat writers, we hold a key to interconnectedness. It is both our privilege and our responsibility."

This essay was published in the fall 2003 combined issue of "The Literary Review" and "Frank", entitled "Expat Writing".

Madame Michel
It was summertime wyhen we arrived in the small village of Istres, with its white walls and red, sun-baked roofs, built on a hillside in southern France. My husband, Pierre, was assigned to the Air Force base, hidden in the vast fields of lavender surrounding the village.

This story was my first published essay, under the title Spécialité Provençale, in the Albany Review, 1986. Since then it has appeared in several anthologies, the most recent,`France, A Love Story, edited by Camille Cusumano, Seal Press, 2004

Yeia sas!
My husband stopped our little car, and I leaned out the window to ask a tall, imposing Cretan the way to a small Byzantine chapel marked in our guidebook....We were high in the hills in the middle of the island where dittany and other wild herbs burst into pink blossoms in early spring....Our imposing Cretan was dressed all in black-high leather boots, wide breeches fitted at the knee, a buttoned shirt with long sleeves. He had thick gray hair and the noble face of Cretan men, the men Henry Miller described as the most handsome in the world.

This essay was first published as "Yassas" in Resident Abroad of the London Financial Times. Read it in one of anthologies: "Greece," (Travelers' Tales, 2004, "Greece, A Love Story," (Seal Press, 2007.)