Bio

Susan Sipal had to travel halfway across the world and return home to embrace her father and grandfather's penchant for telling a tall tale. After having lived with her husband in his homeland of Turkey for many years, she suddenly saw the world with new eyes and had to write about it. Perhaps it was the emptiness of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus that cried out to be refilled, or the myths surrounding the ancient Temple of Artemis, but she's been writing stories filled with myth and mystery ever since.

When not writing--wait, scratch that--she's always writing. Actually, she does have one other interest besides making sense of the voices constantly yabbering in her head (and her family, of course). She's heavily into nutrition and traditional foods. Her kitchen is usually filled with fermenting, bubbling concoctions of yesteryear.

Her small farm, however, is filled with kids and animals. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, two kids, one dog, two rabbits (though that's about to soon multiply), three cats, six goldfish, a dozen chickens, and too many frogs to count.

She is best known as an analyst of the Harry Potter series, with essays published both in the US and the UK discussing the alchemical and Egyptian metaphors. Along with multiple writing-craft workshops, Susan has spoken on the mythological underpinnings of Harry Potter at several fan-based and academic conferences in the US and England.

How to pronounce her last name -- Sipal is Turkish, and it is pronounced as if it's Shipal with the "i" and "a" short. The Turkish character S actually is Ş, with the sh sound.