About Susan Cormier
Susan Cormier is a spoken word artist, event producer, beekeeper, and caretaker of assorted small critters. Her lyrical essay “Advice to a New Beekeeper” won the 2022 CBC Prize in Nonfiction. She has also won or been shortlisted for such awards as CBC’s Prize in Poetry, Arc Magazine’s Poem of the Year, Anvil Press/SubTerrain Magazine’s Lush Triumphant, and the Federation of B.C. Writers’ Literary Writes award. Her work has appeared in publications including SubTerrain, Blood and Aphorisms New Fiction, Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal, and West Coast Line, and several anthologies including Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poets; Against Death: 35 Essays on Living; and Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workplace. She produces Vancouver Story Slam, Canada’s longest-running live indie storytelling competition, and is known for her dynamic, engaging readings. Susan Cormier lives in a charming little town in British Columbia, Canada.
“The ink of Susan Cormier’s writing never dries. Its cadence and imagery run deep and leave impressions on the mind like long, heavy brush strokes….There is a realness to her writing, one that betrays experience, hard-earned wisdom, and a bright, graceful defiance against the odds. There is a subtle rage here, but it is definitely not blind, Susan knows where she is going.”
– Rocco DiGiacomo, author of Ten Thousand Miles Between Us
“What holds (Susan’s) writing together is the precision of language, the intelligence with the choices made, and the humour. The humour sneaks up and surprises you.”
– Rob Taylor, author of The Other Side of Ourselves
Dead Bees Still Sting
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“Electric, alive, and tender, Cormier’s world is one of deep entanglement and ethical implication. How do we live with the natural world in a time when the borders between domestication and wildness are blurred—and how do we grapple with its changes? This book, playful and direct at once, offers a path.”
—Jessica J. Lee, author of Dispersals and Two Trees Make a Forest
For readers of Raising Hare and How to Catch a Mole comes a lyrical exploration of life at the precarious edge of nature and human settlement.
On a small acreage teeming with wild and domestic animals, buzzing with a half-million honeybees, and dotted with fruit trees—including one affectionately named Bill—lives beekeeper-poet Susan Cormier. Circling the farm, an aggressive tangle of forest and blackberry vines thrives, but beyond, the shadow of urban development creeps ever closer. Over five seasons Cormier takes readers through the rhythms of semi-agricultural life, reflecting on the dichotomy between beauty and grief, loss and renewal, and humor and the often heart-wrenching realities of animal existence in an agrarian landscape.
Susan’s acreage is filled with an ever-changing cast of animals, from the hand-raised quail Birb, who likes to play peekaboo, to companionable cats and dogs, Frodo the rescued rabbit, deer, elusive mink, and owls. Dead Bees Still Sting also offers a rich education in beekeeping, guiding readers through the complexities of hive life, the art of capturing swarms, and the serious challenges facing bees today.
Lyrical and poignant, Dead Bees Still Sting is a moving meditation on the cycles of nature, vulnerability, persistence, and survival. Above all, it is a celebration of what it means to belong to a place, to witness its changes, and to find beauty and meaning in the ongoing conversation between humans and nature.
What readers are saying
“Fearless and often funny, beekeeper/poet Susan Cormier leads us to astonishment and awe in the humble but liminal spaces where wild and tame meet at her homestead. I loved every gorgeously-written and surprising page.”
—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
“Gentle meditations on what we nurture and care for, on what we bury and what we unearth, on the twisting flow of life and a human relationship with the most enigmatic of creatures. A braided love letter to a pastoral life of joy and heartbreak that added a moment of quiet at the end of each busy day. A book that city dwellers would do well to read.”
—Marc Hamer, author of How to Catch a Mole
“There’s a new, bracing voice in the tired world of nature writing. Cormier is brave, smart, and doesn’t mess around—a savvy, business-like poet who cuts to the chase. She’s desperately needed.”
—Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast
“Susan Cormier’s Dead Bees Still Sting is a strikingly original meditation on the sweetness and pain of being alive. A masterclass on the art of the personal essay.”
—Candace Savage, author of A Geography of Blood
“Dead Bees Still Sting is a gift. With humor and insight, Susan Cormier gets us to reconsider honeybees and the dedicated souls who are beekeepers. Indelible animals, wild and domestic, scurry through these pages. The next time I observe a covey of quail, I will fondly recall Cormier’s ‘dorky pet quail.’”
—Priyanka Kumar, author of Conversations with Birds and The Light Between Apple Trees
“Electric, alive, and tender, Cormier’s world is one of deep entanglement and ethical implication. How do we live with the natural world in a time when the borders between domestication and wildness are blurred—and how do we grapple with its changes? This book, playful and direct at once, offers a path.”
—Jessica J. Lee, author of Dispersals and Two Trees Make a Forest
Dead Bees Still Sting has been given STARRED reviews by Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and advance praise by Kirkus Reviews.
Contact
Queries related to translation rights and book publishing can be sent to Samantha Haywood
Queries related to distribution of Dead Bees Still Sting can be directed to Greystone Books’ distributors