Susan Crean was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, and is of Scots-Irish descent. She began travelling in the sixties, studying at universities in France and Italy. In 1989 she moved to British Columbia where she spent a decade researching, writing and teaching. Her articles and essays have appeared in magazines and newspapers across Canada, and she is the author of seven books. The first, Who's Afraid of Canadian Culture, appeared in 1976. Her landmark work, The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr, was nominated for five awards including the Governor General's Literary award and won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 2002. Crean currently lives in Toronto.