Meet Susy

Susy Flory is the New York Times bestselling author or co-author of eighteen books. She's founder of Everything Memoir, and the executive director of West Coast Christian Writers, a nonprofit that educates and supports Christian writers through annual conferences and many other eventes.

A graduate of UCLA, Northern Seminary, and now a doctoral candidate at Houston Theological Seminary, Susy has a background in journalism, education, and communications. She loves reading and writing stories about unforgettable people who are living lives of adventure, courage, hope, redemption, and transformation.
 

She first started writing at the Newhall Signal with the legendary Scotty Newhall, an ex-editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a one-legged cigar-smoking curmudgeon who ruled the newsroom from behind a dented metal desk where he pounded out stories on an Underwood Typewriter.

Susy's first book, Fear Not Da Vinci, was co-written with Gini Monroe with contributions by Ward Gasque, and published in 2006. Other books include So Long Status Quo: What I Learned from Women Who Changed the World; Miracle on Voodoo Mountain (with Megan Boudreaux); and The Good, The Bad, and the Grace of God, with Jep and Jessica Robertson. Recent books include Desired by God with Van Moody, and The Sky Below, the story of astronaut Scott Parazynski, the only man every to fly in space and summit Mount Everest.
 

Susy's runaway bestseller, Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zerowritten with Michael Hingson, hit the New York Times bestsellers list in both hardcover nonfiction and e-book nonfiction the first week of release. Thunder Dog has also been adapted for the stage, optioned for film, and translated into over 15 languages, including German, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Chinese.

Her new book, Sanctuary: The True Story of an Irish Village, a Man Who Lost His Way, and the Rescue Donkeys That Led Him Home, with Patrick Barrett, released March, 2022. For decades, Patrick's mom and dad rescued lost and forgotten donkeys in the Irish countryside, never knowing that one day, the donkeys would rescue their son, struggling from PTSD.

Susy is a member of The Authors Guild. preaches regularly in her local church, and loves mentoring leaders and writers. A breast cancer survivor of four gnarly surgeries, Susy celebrates life hiking in the High Sierras, loves to travel, and leads an annual tour called A Writers Adventure to the Emerald Isle.

I graduated in 2022 with my Masters in New Testament Studies from Northern Seminary in Chicago. I was in a cohort with Scot McKnight, and had the chance to study with Lynn Cohick, Nijay Gupta, Beth Felker Jones, and Ingrid Faro. I followed Dr Cohick to Houston Theological Seminary, and am finishing up a doctoral degree in New Testament Studies. My dissertation on women writers in the ancient world (including the biblical era) is well underway; please pray for me!

My academic publishing credits include two pieces in Nijay Gupta's Galatians: The Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2023). and a recent journal article in The Priscilla Papers, a peer reviewed journal, on the first named writer in human history, 

a woman!

I also have a book called Jesus Was coming out in 2025 with Kregel Publications. 

If the bio was a bit too dry and professional for you, I offer some quirky personal stuff in the form of 25 Random Facts:

1. I'm an advanced skiier and can handle double black diamond runs, but...
2. I'm super clumsy and can barely walk upright. I often run into door frames and have been known to suddenly lurch sideways and almost fall while simply standing still.
3. I love how books feel, smell, and sound.
4. My favorite movie of all time is Man From Snowy River.
5. My second favorite is Winged Migration.
6. I'm not a gourmet diner; I like comfort food like grilled cheese or tuna sandwiches.
7. My dad was a Texas cowboy.
8. I grew up on the back of a horse. My favorite horse was Harry, a half-Morgan, half-Arabian bred by the woman who provided the Wells Fargo stagecoach horses. He was super smart and could open his stall door.
9. Someday I want to have a secret garden, complete with walls and a hidden gate with an iron key. Inside? Roses, foxgloves, D'anjou pear trees, and birds. Lots of birds.
10. When I retire, I want to learn the harp and hire myself out to play at rich people's parties.
11. I fell in love with my husband at the age of 18 over a bottle of Fix beer at sunset on the Greek island of Santorini.
12. I love birdwatching and treasure my marked up copy of Peterson's Field Guide to Western Birds.
13. Because I adore and idolize writers, writing, and books, I always thought of writers as a separate, highly evolved race of which I could never be a part. Surprise! (God is good.)
14. Books are my first language.
15. I'm notoriously absent-minded and can look straight at someone who's waving and smiling and talking to me and not even notice them. Or hear them.
16. I would rather attend a U2 concert than do most other things (including church. Sorry, God ! I'm pretty sure Bono is a Christian, though!)
17. One of the highlights of my life was exploring a crumbling Irish castle on the stony beach of a foggy Irish lough with Robert, Ethan, and Teddy. It was built by the O'Dochartaigh clan in County Donegal, where my mother's ancestors are from.
18. I LOVE doing counted cross-stitch. I'm working on a huge piece right now, just in the beginning stages, and I'm really intimidated by its difficulty.
19. I'm quite shy and sometimes stutter in social situations. Yet I can easily do talks for large audiences.
20. I love animals and I'm currently living in the mountains with wild neighbors like bobcats, bears, and mountain lions. 
21. Every winter we have a few storms that necessitate snowshoes to get to our cars. We bring our groceries to the house on a hunting sled.
22. Women who dress really well intimidate me.
23. One of my favorite places in the world is a newsroom. I feel at home there.
24. I still have my Breyer model horses. I think they come alive at night and romp around my office.
25. Back to animals--we have flying squirrels in the forest around our house. Everyone once in a while we see or hear them. They can fly 200 feet and are so fast, they look like streaks of shadow and light.