Susan Schaefer Bernardo is an award-winning poet and children's book author whose poems have been published in California Quarterly, All We Can Hold, and The Cancer Poetry Project 2 - where her poem "Tonic Waters" was selected as the winning entry and read aloud at the 2014 World Cancer Day Concert.She has written four books for children, including Sun Kisses, Moon Hugs, The Artist Who Loved Cats, The Big Adventures of Tiny House, and The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm, a collaboration with LeVar Burton to help families coping with trauma. The Rhino was sent on a rocket to the International Space Station and read aloud by astronaut Kate Rubins for Storytime from Space. She is also the author of Inspired, a young adult novel about an apprentice muse. She holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and an M.A. in English Literature from Yale.She lives in coastal Northern California with her partner, two dogs, two cats, and an undetermined number of banana slugs, newts, deer, birds, trees, and other wild things. You can find her rambling on the beach and through the redwoods, talking to the waves and trees, and dreaming up new ways to express herself with driftwood and rocks and paint and movement and words.