Susan Bywaters is a writer based in New York City. Her works center around morality, absurdity, and the victim/perpetrator paradigm.
Susan’s works have been performed on stages in Germany, Brazil, Croatia, and across the US. Her most recent libretti, including an ending with Samuel Beebe (Strange Trace), The Windows with Elizabeth Gartman (Guerilla Opera), Daughter of God (LOAM), and My Wife is a Ghost (in collaboration with the Bard College Composition program in an initiative led by Missy Mazzoli) have been commissioned by companies across the US.
Her darkly comedic opera It is a Comfort to Know, written with 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 Schuman Award for Most Outstanding Score from BMI Foundation in the same year. 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.