Harvey, Suzanne R., 1934-

Biographical/Historical note

Suzanne Richardson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1934. She received her BA (Biology, Chemistry, and English) from Carlow College in 1955. She received an MA (English) from Northeastern University, with a thesis on George Meredith; and a PhD (English) from Tufts University, where she specialized in Elizabethan poetry and wrote a dissertation on Edmund Spenser.

She married her husband, Robert J. Harvey, in 1956. After teaching at Pine Manor College (1972-1976) and Tufts University (1971-1976), she and her family relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where for almost two decades she lectured in the English Department at Stanford University (1978-1997). Nearly a decade of her time at Stanford (1988-1997) was spent as a resident fellow (together with her husband) in Larkin House, an all-freshmen residence hall. She and her husband co-authored a book about this experience entitled Virtual Reality and the College Freshman: All Our Friends Are 18 (1999).

While at Stanford, she also was a visiting lecturer in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley. For nearly a decade (1979-1988), she regularly taught editorial workshops offered as part of the curriculum for the Publishing Program at the University of California Extension. Her teaching produced the volume A Functional Style: Logic and the Art of Writing, which she used as a teaching device not only in her university courses, but also outside the classroom at workshops for the University of California Regents, for Bank of America executives, and at Asilomar for the American Medical Writers Association. Upon retirement from Stanford in 1997, she remained active, lecturing for Emeritus College and for Diablo Valley College near her home in Alamo, California. She was a member of the Academy of American Poets as well as a member of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Her collected poetry has appeared under the title A Tiara for the Twentieth Century (2009), with individual poems published in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Austria.

She died on Saturday, July 17, 2010, in Walnut Creek, California. She was survived by her husband, Robert J. Harvey, cofounder and former chairman, CEO, and president of Thoratec Corporation, now in Pleasanton, California; and her three sons, Dennis, Brian, and James (Duke); in addition to five grandsons, Kevin, Sean, Gregory, Patrick, and Matthew.

From the guide to the Suzanne Richardson Harvey papers, 1955-2011, (Dept. of Special Collections & University Archives.)