Fierce Voice - Susan Currie
Susan Currie is an elementary teacher of 26 years, with an MA in English Literature and an ARCT in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory. Before becoming a teacher, she worked as a musician in such jobs as music director, accompanist, organist, choir director, dinner music performer, vocal coach and piano teacher. Susan is also an adoptee who was in foster care in her earliest life. When she grew up, she went looking for her birth family and learned the amazing fact that her mother’s side of the family is Haudenosaunee—from the Cayuga Nation, and the Turtle Clan. She learned about the rich history and culture of the Cayuga, about her family roots at the Six Nations of the Grand River, and also about the devastating role that residential school (the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario) played in creating the inherited trauma that runs through her biological family. This knowledge, although it contained dark aspects, was a source of tremendous joy for her. Finally, for the first time, she felt like she cast a shadow. Susan’s novels include: Basket of Beethoven (2001, Fitzhenry & Whiteside); The Mask that Sang (2016, Second Story Press); Iz the Apocalypse (2023, Common Deer Press), and Fierce Voice (Common Deer Press, Fall 2025). She has also written three nonfiction books for Saunders Publishing: Haudenosaunee: the People and Nations (2024), Amazing Women in Canada: Autumn Peltier (2024) and Indigenous Peoples: Cayuga (Fall 2025). Her novels have been finalists for the Ontario Silver Birch Award, the Hackmatack Award, the Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award, the CODE Burt Award, the Ontario Library Association White Pine Award, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children, and the Bank Street College of Education Best Books of the Year. Her books have also been included in many “best of” lists.
GENRE: Young Adult
Blurb:
When foster kid Iz Beaufort starts a music outreach at a local community centre with her friends (and Teo, the boy she sort of kissed last summer), a little girl named Skye discloses something horrible. Iz knows she needs to help Skye, but risks her own deadly secret coming out in the process. Is raising her voice worth the risk? Fierce Voice is the sequel to the White Pine Award nominee Iz the Apocalypse.
