susanna schantz
occasionally
writes a poem, blocking blues in
narrow-banded green
Publications
SIGN BROKEN, MESSAGE INSIDE is the 2026 Juniper Literary Prize winner for debut poetry collection (forthcoming, University of Massachusetts Press).
Selected Poems:
"Sign Broken, Message Inside," "Happy Mother's Days," and "John 3:16," The Common (forthcoming)
"Cadenza," coastlines review: a journal of docupoetics (forthcoming)
"Water the Wilds," PHIL LIT Journal (forthcoming)
"Once, Before a Blue Moon," The Sunlight Press (forthcoming)
"Doing the Laundry, Dadakuku
"There is Something Savage," La Piccioletta Barca
"Quarter Rest with Fermata," VAN Magazine
"Breath Taking," runner-up in the After the End Poetry Competition, 2025
"Our Bodies, Ourselves," Sein und Werden (Verschränkung)
"Never Thine, Ever Mine," Syncopation Literary Journal
"Hemicrania (Dis)Continua," The Calendula Review: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
"Warm Up," Wildfire Words Ukraine Anthology 2026
"The Bible You Grew up With," "The Most Powerful Position is on Your Knees," "The Original Toll Free Number is God's," and ''Dusty Bibles, Dirty Lives," (Four Church Signs Outside Clemson, South Carolina), The Humanist
"Embouchure," Jerry Jazz Musician
"Vacation Bible School Under the Sea," Deceleration
About
Susanna Schantz is the recipient of the 2026 Juniper Poetry Prize for her debut collection SIGN BROKEN, MESSAGE INSIDE (University of Massachusetts Press, 2027). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Common, dadakuku, La Piccioletta Barca, coastlines review: a journal of docupoetics, PHIL LIT, Sein und Werden, Syncopation Literary Journal, The Calendula Review: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, The Humanist, The Sunlight Press, Deceleration, Jerry Jazz Musician, VAN Magazine, and Wildfire Words Ukraine Anthology 2026, and her poem "Breath Taking" was a runner-up in the After the End Poetry Competition 2025. She is a former teacher for New York City schools for pregnant, parenting and unhoused teens, and for young men in the justice system, U.S. Department of Education TRIO programs, and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, with degrees from Yale and Columbia Universities. A trained naturalist, she lives in South Carolina and tries to keep her chronic neurological pain from ruining the day.
