Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Susan Currie (Fierce Voice)!
Meet the Author: Susan Currie
I am 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, I worked as a musician in such jobs as music director, accompanist, organist, choir director, dinner music performer, vocal coach and piano teacher.
I am also an adoptee who was in foster care in my earliest life. When I grew up, I went looking for my birth family and learned the amazing fact that my mother’s side of the family is Haudenosaunee—Cayuga Nation, Turtle Clan. I learned about the rich history and culture of the Cayuga, about my 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 my biological family. This knowledge, although it contained dark aspects, was a source of tremendous joy for me. Finally, for the first time, I felt like she cast a shadow.
My 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). I have 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). My 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. My books have also been included in many “best of” lists.
My novels tend to centre on talented children in precarious situations who struggle not only to survive but to carve out a life of meaning. From a boy in a co-op who makes a deal with a lonely girl to give him piano lessons, to a Cayuga girl who doesn’t know her past but seeks it out via a path of magic realism that leads her and her mother to their true history, to a feisty foster child who gets into a prestigious music school by playing fast and loose with a few laws, my characters are resilient, determined, and fighting against systemic barriers to find their voices and speak their truths. When the path isn’t there, they hack a way through.
About the Book: Fierce Voice
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 that throws Iz’s life into disarray. Iz knows she needs to help Skye, but risks her own deadly secret coming out in the process. Is raising her voice worth the danger?
Fierce Voice is the sequel to the White Pine Award nominee Iz the Apocalypse.
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~Author Chat~
YABC: Is your main character like you?
Yes! Both of us were in foster care—me while I was very young, and Iz throughout her entire life. When I grew up, I learned about my Indigenous maternal family line—Haudenosaunee, Cayuga, Turtle Clan. Iz doesn’t know her roots…yet (stay tuned for Book Four). As well, both of us are musical. Iz is self-taught. I had opportunities she did not, including attending the “gifted youth program” at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada.
YABC: How do you know when a book is finished?
I tend to do quite a lot of plotting beforehand, crafting storylines and figuring out how they intertwine. When everything has come to a logical finish—when everyone has had their arc and their resolution—I know it’s time to bring the story to a close. I actually find endings easier than beginnings. Beginnings are brutal! Trying to figure out where to start a story is like rocket science for me. Typically I write the beginning over and over again until I feel like I’ve kicked things off in exactly the right place.
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
Years ago, I taught a little girl who was a foster kid. She came to me unable to read, partly due to being moved from school to school and partly because of an undiagnosed learning disability. Right away, I could tell that she was highly musical. That year, she learned to read through songs, rhythms and melodies. She made enormous progress. Then she was abruptly moved to yet another foster home, without any notice.
That little girl became the inspiration for my character, Iz Beaufort. Iz is a foster kid who has been moved through over twenty homes. She is also fantastically musically talented. She can play by ear and can visualize music as colours, lines, shapes.
My first novel about Iz was called Iz the Apocalypse. It detailed how she conned her way into an elite music school and sort of found love in the process.
Fierce Voice is the sequel to Iz the Apocalypse. In it, Iz is confronted by a horrible event from her past and has to make an agonizing choice about whether or not to speak up. This story also goes back to that long-ago little girl I taught, who had also been in traumatic situations—like many foster kids.
YABC: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Before I could write, I used to dictate stories to my mom. I was probably three years old or so. Some of those stories are really funny.
Later, when I could write, I spent hours scribbling in notebooks. Then, when my parents bought me a typewriter, I pounded out story after story.
When I was in university, I made a New Year’s resolution to publish a novel. I figured a picture book would be easiest (not true, as it turned out). I sent a manuscript off to Orca Books. Months went by and I moved on. Then an editor reached out, suggesting I develop the story into a middle grade novel. She helped me create an outline, synopsis, etc. I wrote the novel. Then, out other blue, she left Orca! I figured that was the end of my story. But a year or so later, she showed up at Fitzhenry & Whiteside and asked me to send my manuscript there. The rest is history!
YABC: How do you keep your ‘voice’ true to the age category you are writing within?
It helps that I’ve been a teacher for 27 years and have had a front row seat to endlessly entertaining communication between young people. Kids are creative and funny and deep in their ways of expressing themselves. They have no idea how many times I’ve poached parts of their conversations while ostensibly paying no attention to them!
YABC: What type of scene do you love to write the most?
I love a scene fraught with big feelings! Doesn’t matter what the feelings are. It could be a love scene between characters who have been struggling to express their feelings, or an angsty turning point when characters must make hard decisions, or a dark night of the soul when all seems lost. I love plunging down through layers in the characters’ minds or conversations, teasing out every acute detail, laying bare the tension.
YABC: If your character could meet a character from another book, who would it be?
I think Iz would hit it off with Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games. They have a lot in common. Both were essentially forced into violent, unfair, bureaucratically complex situations outside their control—Katniss into the Hunger Games juggernaut, and Iz into the for-profit Dominion Children’s Care. Both had to learn to stand up and fight back, while still somehow trying to hold onto their humanity. Both are resilient, steely, larger than life.
YABC: What hobbies do you enjoy?
First and foremost, I love to travel! My family and I have been to many countries over the years. Last summer, we went to South Korea for the first time, which was amazing. Next summer we’re heading to Vienna. Secondly, I am a huge musical theatre nerd. I adore seeing new shows and researching everything to do with them. Third, I love books—writing them, reading them, sharing them with kids in classrooms. And finally, I adore music, pretty much all kinds.
YABC: What is your favorite holiday or tradition and why?
I love Christmas! My favourite part of it is Christmas Eve, when the earth seems hushed and silent. I sit at the window and imagine that peace is all around, like the very air we’re all breathing in. For that moment, I feel like we are all united, all linked in our hope for a world built on decency and compassion.
YABC: What’s up next for you?
I’m currently working on book 3 of The Métier Quartet. It’s called Manifesto. It takes place largely in Rome, where Iz is ostensibly performing with her school group but is also, secretly, trying to find answers to a long ago tragic love affair. Her hunt threatens to drive a wedge between herself and her boyfriend Teo. It’ll be coming out in 2027 from Common Deer Press.
Title: Fierce Voice
Author: Susan Currie
Release Date: September 2, 2025
Publisher: Common Deer Press
Genre: Young Adult
Age Range: 12 and up
