Biography

Susan v.H.Thompson specializes in writing with creative flair and a social conscience.

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She earned a B.A. in Honours English Literature at the University of Calgary in 1999, where she studied poetry with Fred Wah. While there, she gave a poetry reading at Pages on Kensington and published in the student literary magazine.

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After university, she started her career writing email bulletins. She began working with Eli Pariser at 911peace.org shortly after 9/11 and then followed him to work at U.S. advocacy organization MoveOn.org. Her emails grew a subscriber list of 17,000 to over 1 million people across the United States and around the world. Later, she worked on a progressive Canadian website called ViveleCanada.ca with publisher of the Canadian Encyclopedia and Officer of the Order of Canada Mel Hurtig.

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From there, Susan went on to freelance and work as a staff reporter. She wrote for several independent and rural newspapers in the Peace region of northern Alberta, such as the Vault, the Smoky River Express, the Mile Zero News, and the Peace Country Sun. Besides breaking news, her beats included court reporting, municipal council decisions, the arts, and local events - including covering the Covid-19 pandemic.

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She also published in various magazines, including a regular column in Art of the Peace, as well as features in AlbertaViews, Canadian Dimension, SEE Magazine in Edmonton and EYE Weekly in Toronto.

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More recently, Susan has worked as a content writer and copywriter for progressive Canadian agencies. She worked at Metric Strategies for a year writing email campaigns, ads, and landing pages for various large unions, organizations and progressive political parties. Susan is currently a regular freelance copywriter for Point Blank Creative, Canada’s largest full-service progressive agency, working only with values-aligned clients. She specializes in drafting effective emails for fundraising and activist campaigns.

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As a volunteer, Susan has created content and copy for the new Peace Country Progressive Alliance. She has helped several citizen actions succeed, such as an online email campaign and a physical petition that garnered over 4000 signatures. She also handled content and social media for Megan Ciurysek's 2023 provincial election campaign, in addition to her previous work promoting the Peace Region Dance Society.

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Susan is currently writing two books: a memoir of how she became a professional fire performer while also helping her husband face his bipolar disorder, and a how-to guide for playing with fire professionally.

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Performing as Sisu van Hell, Susan has been a fire dancer and flow artist for over a decade with her troupe Circus of Hell. She has won Leviwander of the Year (2019) and Best Troupe (2016) in the CanSpin national awards. She also appeared in a mini-documentary with her husband for the New York Post's Extraordinary People in 2019. Susan is able to eat fire, spin fire, dance in fire dresses, and walk on broken glass. She is also an admin of Fire Performance Safety Discussion and Business for Flow Artists on Meta, mentoring other performers around the world in business and fire safety.

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Since 2004, Susan has also been the Vice President of her family's welding business and has helped build a successful YouTube channel and social media presence for the Hell 'N' Back Welding Ltd. brand.

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Susan has two adult daughters and lives in a cabin in the forest of the M.D. of Smoky River with her husband Doug "Demon" Thompson, where she cares for a hobby farm of dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens and ducks. Her pronouns are she/her.

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