Susan Bywaters is a writer based in New York City. Her works center around morality and the victim/perpetrator paradigm.
Susan’s operatic works have been performed on stages in Germany, Brazil, Croatia, and across the US. Her most recent darkly comedic opera It is a Comfort to Know, written with frequent collaborator Elizabeth Gartman, was a runner-up in the Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation 2022. This is following the success of their previous collaboration [Weight], featured in Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation in May of 2021 and the recipient of the William Schumann Award for Most Outstanding Score from BMI Foundation in the same year. Her and Gartman’s most recent work, Moritura Filia, was recently commissioned and performed in venues across Germany and Austria by Ensemble Chemie.
Also a playwright, poet, and prose writer, Susan is collaborating with director Madeline Whitesell in the development of her play Date/Rape. Her set of three poems entitled “My Thoughts on the Upcoming End of the World,” later the basis for her work When You Leave Me with composer Elizabeth Gartman, has been featured at readings with Infrasound Ensemble in Brooklyn, New York.
Susan holds a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance and a Master of Arts in Theatre Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.