UMass Boston

Susan Tan

Department:
English
Title:
Assistant Professor

Degrees

PhD, University of Cambridge

MPhil, University of Cambridge

BA, Williams College

Professional Publications & Contributions

  • Piece By Piece: A Yin Tu Tang Story.Picture book commissioned by the Peabody Essex Museum Publishing Press. 2019.
  • Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire. Reprint with Scholastic Books. 2019.
  • Cilla Lee-Jenkins: The Epic Story. Roaring Brook Press, Macmillan. 2019.
  • Cilla Lee-Jenkins: This Book is A Classic. Roaring Brook Press, Macmillan. 2018.
  • Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire. Roaring Brook Press, Macmillan. 2017.
  • “Between ‘Castoff’ and ‘Half-Man’: Pressuring Mixed-Race Identity in The Drowned Cities.” Raced Bodies, Erased Lives: Depictions of Race in Young Adult Dystopian and Science Fiction. Eds. Miranda Green-Barteet & Meghan Gilbert-Hickey (University Press of Mississippi). Forthcoming in 2020.
  • “Battling School: Death as Education in Ender’s Game.” Global Perspectives on Death in Children’s Literature. Eds. Lesley Clement & Leyli Jamali (Routledge). 2015.
  • “Distant Districts and Dark Days: National Identity in The Hunger Games.” Power and Ideology in Children’s Literature. Eds. Aine McGillicudy & Marian Keyes. (Four Courts Press). 2014.
  • “The Making of the Citizen: Politics of Maturation in The Hunger Games.” Space and Place in ‘The Hunger Games’: New Readings of the Novels. Eds. Deirdre Anne Evans Garriott, Whitney Elaine Jones & Julie Elizabeth Tyler. (McFarland). 2014.
  • “Worse Games To Play?: Deconstructing Resolution in The Hunger Games.” The Politics of Panem: Critical Perspectives on ‘The Hunger Games.’ Ed. Sean P. Connors. (Sense) 2014.
  • “Burn With Us: Sacrificing Childhood in The Hunger Games.” The Lion and the Unicorn 37.1: p.54-73. 2013.

Additional Information

Banned Book Fair At UMass Boston Celebrates Diversity

Awards and Honors

Fiction

  • 2019 New England Book Award Finalist
  • 2017 Asian/Pacific American Library Association Children’s Honor Award
  • 2017 Workshop Fellow at Tent: Children’s Literature, Sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center, Amherst. Weeklong retreat for emerging Jewish authors
  • 2015 Gish Jen Emerging Writers Fellow, Writers’ Room of Boston                                            

Academic

  • 2011 Jacqueline Wilson Award, University of Cambridge
  • 2011 Shortlisted for United Kingdom Literacy Association Student Research Award 
  • 2011 MPhil Distinction, University of Cambridge

Courses Taught

  • English 200 Introduction to Literary Studies
  • English 303 Creative Writing for Children
  • English 335 Children’s Literature
  • English 371 Young Adult Literature 
  • English 379 Special Topics: The Evil Child in Children’s and Young Adult Literature
  • English 273G The Art of Fiction 
  • English 262G The Art of Literature