Former Curator Finds Creative Second Act as Aspiring Writer

Published April 10, 2026 | Request Information

Susan Edwards spent decades shaping how audiences encountered others’ art – now she is shaping stories of her own.

The longtime museum leader and art historian – who spent nearly 18 years as executive director and CEO of the Frist Art Museum in Nashville – has embarked on a second creative life. Through the Johns Hopkins MA in Writing program, she is working to enhance her expertise with both fiction and nonfiction. It is not a pivot so much as a return to a long-held ambition, one rooted in her scholarly work on photography in the Depression-era South and nurtured over a lifetime spent immersed in narrative, visual culture, and human experience.

Born in Baltimore, Edwards eventually landed in New York as a young adult to work on Wall Street. But she found herself drawn less to finance and more to the city’s museums.

“I realized I was spending all my time in art museums, so I went back to study art history.”

That decision led to a PhD and a distinguished career in museum leadership and scholarship. Before arriving in Nashville, she held positions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hunter College, and served as executive director of the Katonah Museum of Art.

At the Frist, a non-collecting kunsthalle focusing on temporary exhibitions, Edwards and her staff “punched above our weight.” During her tenure, they helped expand the museum’s national and international profile. The Frist earned accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums and presented more than 225 exhibitions, collaborating with major museums around the world. In 2011, she was named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her contributions to promoting French culture.

After retiring, Edwards finally found time to pursue the literary ambitions she had set aside during a 24/7 museum career. “I had always wanted to turn my doctoral dissertation into a novel,” Edwards said. “I interviewed so many people along the way, and the stories stayed with me.”

She began writing short stories and sought instruction wherever she could – workshops at The Porch in Nashville, courses at both Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago, and intensive study in Ireland with acclaimed short story writer Claire Keegan.

But progress felt uneven. “I was in a fantastic writers’ group,” she said, “but I wasn’t moving forward the way I wanted.”

A chance conversation with a fellow traveler in Ireland led her to consider a low-residency graduate program in writing. She began researching options and found a program at Johns Hopkins that matched her needs: rigorous craft training, flexible schedule, and a diverse curriculum.

“My Achilles’ heel was that I wasn’t an English major,” she said. “Expository writing is very different from fiction. The program offered me a chance to learn technique and receive feedback while continuing to broaden my reading.”

Her current project is ambitious: a collection of four interrelated novellas set in the American South across four decades – the 1930s through the 1960s. Each story follows the same woman as she evolves from a provincial upbringing into broader cultural and social worlds, and each draws loosely on the structure of a Chekhov play. “As a historian, you’re expected to contextualize everything,” she said, “but in fiction, you have to let the history be the background – like gesso on a canvas – and focus on character-driven storytelling.”

Edwards credits the JHU program with helping her refine voice, dialogue, narrative structure, and point of view, as well as giving her the confidence to share work in progress. She singles out “top-flight” faculty members James Thomas, Elise Levine, and Evan James for their accessibility, positivity, and constructive criticism. “One of the biggest things I gained was comfort with vulnerability,” she said.

“There’s something very direct about exposing yourself through writing. I was grateful to be studying with people who are qualified to give feedback and who want me to be the best writer I can be.”

Edwards has begun to embrace a public identity as a writer. She updated her professional profiles to identify herself as “a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and thank you notes” and even declared herself a writer on her income tax return.

“I don’t discount the importance of social correspondence,” she said of her legendary hand-written acknowledgements. “I think any short writing you do teaches you to convey something in your heart.”

She also remains active in literary communities, supporting and encouraging aspiring writers. The mentorship she once offered in museums continues in a new form.

“The thing I am proudest of is mentoring people,” she said. “If one person I’ve helped says something kind about my influence, my life is worth it.”

Despite accolades and experience, Edwards describes herself as “plagued with insecurities, like every creative person.” Yet she also embraces course correction and growth and has committed to a daily routine, knowing that if she does one day publish a novella or a short story, her writing will not only connect with the person who reads her work for the first time, but to the people who will read it in perpetuity.

“I write every morning now,” she said. “I’m not happy if I’m not writing.”