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	In Memoriam, Susan Atefat-Peckham 1970-2004 Poet, Teacher, Friend
	Susan Atefat-Peckham		Susan Atefat-Peckham taught poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Hope College before joining the faculty of GCSU. She wrote poetry and creative nonfiction. Born first generation American to Iranian parents, she lived most of her early life in France and Switzerland although she also lived in many places throughout the United States (New York, New Jersey, Texas, Nebraska, Michigan) and also in Iran. A talented writer, musician, and abstract expressionist painter, her work was informed by many countries. She was the recipient of a number of teaching and writing awards, including the National Poetry Series award and an Academy of American Poets award.
	Her individual work appeared in The Literary Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto Del Sol, The Southern Poetry Review, The Sycamore Review, The Texas Review, and was anthologized in Common Ground: An Anthology of Multicultural Writing (Ed. Sybil Estess, Prentice-Hall, 2002). Her book manuscript of creative nonfiction, Black Eyed Bird, was Runner-Up for the Beryl Markham Award for Creative Nonfiction (2001) at Story Line Press. She won the National Poetry Series award for her collection That Kind of Sleep (Coffee House Press).
	Susan won the 2000 National Poetry Series Award for That Kind of Sleep	Susan joined the MFA faculty at Georgia College & State University in the fall of 2002 where she taught Poetry, Poetry & Poetics, Poetry Translation, and other courses. She became the first poetry editor of Arts & Letters and helped to bring such outstanding poets to campus as Li-Young Lee and others. Students at GCSU remember her “Poetry Blitz” project, where her poetry students would photocopy and display poems all over campus. Susan loved having her classes to her house on Lake Sinclair, where food and poetry were abundant.
	In 2003, Susan found out that she had been selected for a Fulbright fellowship to teach in Amman, Jordan. An international citizen, Susan was excited to return to that part of the world close to her Iranian roots. She and her family departed for Jordan in December of 2003, with plans to return to GCSU in the fall of 2004.	The 2002-2003 MFA Program and Arts & Letters staff at the 2003 AWP Conference in Baltimore.
	Susan and Cyrus were buried at the Clarens Cemetery in Montreux, Switzerland.	Susan, her husband Joel, their two young sons, Cyrus and Darius (aged six and three), and Susan’s mother were on a weekend excursion outside Amman in early February. On the late-night drive home, their van swerved to miss a road repair crew and crashed. Tragically, Susan and her son Cyrus were killed. Susan’s husband, mother, and youngest son were hurt but survived. Many of Susan’s family and friends live all over the world, including in her parents’ homeland, Iran. Of all the places Susan lived, one of her favorites was in the Lake Geneva section of Switzerland, where she had gone to school when she was a girl. She and Cyrus were buried in the Montreux, Switzerland cemetery, where citizens from throughout the world might visit and pay respects to their lost loved ones.
	Arts & Letters #12 was devoted in memoriam to Susan. On the cover was this quote from an interview she gave to Poets & Writers shortly after the 9-11 tragedy: Art is empathy. Empathy and compassion are what we need in times of grief. I tell my students, “Let’s try to take something good out of this, even it seems impossible.”	Arts & Letters 12		Susan was instrumental in selecting work by several of the poets who appeared in this issue (Fleda Brown, Robert Nazarene, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Keith Ratzlaff, Tim Skeen, and Carolyne Wright among them), as well as creative nonfiction author Sarah Biggs-Wudel.
	Poet Alice Friman and Susan at GCSU, fall 2003. Alice wrote a moving essay for the memorial issue about working in Susan’s office while she was in Jordan, and then after her death.	Even though she was with us in Milledgeville for only a short time, Susan touched many lives in the community and at the university. She loved to talk about her dreams, to try to interpret what they meant, especially if you happened to appear in them!
		She visited her son Cyrus’s school in Milledgeville to talk about poetry with his classmates. When we held memorial services at GCSU, several men and women attended that we did not know, but who knew Susan from some school or community connection.
	Susan and Cyrus At the Bronx Zoo	Although Susan used to say that her favorite city in the world was New York, she certainly made an impact in Milledgeville, Georgia, especially on her colleagues and students who worked so closely with her. She touched us all, and she is missed. Martin Lammon Editor, Arts & Letters
		To Family, Friends, Students, Colleagues, Teachers, and others whose lives were touched by Susan and Cyrus… Susan’s parents, Bahram and Fari Atefat, wish to thank all who have expressed their support and shown them great kindness since the tragic accident in Jordan. They wish to share this open letter to all, and a poem by Fari Atefat that she was written in memory of her daughter and grandson. Here you may find three new poems by Fari, for her daughter and grandsons. “Your kind words and love will never be forgotten.” - Fari and Bahram Atefat

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