Susan M. Tiberghien

Footsteps is a collection of witty, heartfelt stories about the journey of one writer through many kinds of love, a marriage to a Frenchman, raising six children in five different countries, becoming a writer and still staying in love with Pierre.
"A charming, heartfelt journey into European culture and cuisine, the beauty and loneliness of unfamiliar places, and the exquisite good fortune of finding a lifelong companion. Tiberghien's essays are a rich bouillabaisse of scenic detail and delicious memories. Just a lovely book." Dinty W. Moore

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 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.

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

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.
Drawing from Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, she 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

"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).

"My French husband and I do not perceive the potato the same way. Recently at the Krüller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands, in front of Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters", I realized that the potato was proof of our differenct cultures. Pierre stared at the dark painting as intensely as if he were looking at the "Last Supper." I turned away, thinking how stange such a solemn gathering around a platter of potatoes..."
This essay was first published in the Christian Science Monitor. Read it in the following anthologies: "Cupid's Wild Arrows," edited by Dianne Dicks (Bergli Books, Basel, Switzerland, 1993); "They Only Laughed Lated," edited by Carol Allen, (Europublication, 1997).

"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).

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

"Letting the Experience Choose You" Writing the personal essay is both inventive and fulfilling. Inventive, because the writer b ecom es storytteller and poet. And fulfilling because in this artful crafting of personal experience, the writer shares its meaning with the reader. In my workshops, I teach four steps to writing the personal essay. First, choose a personal experience or rather let it choose you. What experience wishes to be shared? Sit quietly, close your eyes, go within. Wait for the experience to surface on its own...