Suzanne Crane grew up in a family of botanists and bird-watchers in Wisconsin, but now lives in Central Virginia, on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. After earning a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in English and Creative Writing, she moved to Charlottesville, Virginia for graduate school in English. She earned an MA from the University of Virginia in 1987 and began teaching Composition, Creative Writing, and American Literature in the Virginia Community College System soon after. While a part-time teacher at Piedmont Virginia Community College, she began taking pottery classes in the evenings, mostly to get her mind off of text-based communication, but also to experiment with being a beginner at something again. She continued taking pottery classes at PVCC even after becoming a full time professor at Germanna Community College, near Culpeper and Fredericksburg, Virginia.
