“It is obvious that thoughts are powerful and can manifest directly as words and images 
so completely as to lift a spirit from the depths of loneliness, pain, fatigue, depression, 
and despair.”                 
—Susan Bates Corlieu

Bates hails from Memphis, Tennessee, where she was a professional stage actress, singer, dancer 
for 25 years, working from Maine to Florida. She has taught Montessori preschool, college acting, 
and is a visual artist in sculpture, painting, collage, and fiber arts. Her poetry and short stories 
have been published in the literary magazines The Scribbler, The Scroll, and then in Mirage, 
when she lived in Bisbee, Arizona. In Arizona she collaborated with Dick Bakken as performance poet 
in the group Werewords, as well as co-created with him the Writers Cramp intergenerational summer 
workshop for 9–90 year olds at The Bisbee Repertory Theatre that she founded and directed. She was 
often featured in Bakken’s poetry column, “Ink that Echoes,” in The Bisbee News.

Now Bates lives at Arcadia, five and a half acres in the country north of Memphis she shares with Tango, 
Caviar, Champagne (mini horses), Keeper and Alioto (cats), Zadie, Twila, Pansy, and Lily Coyote (dogs), 
and her recently wedded husband who’s been her sweetheart for over 10 years, Roderick Hutchinson. The 
photo is from their current Christmas card.

Bates is a certified hypnotist with special interest in past life regression and progression.