Librarian Note There is than one author in the GoodReads database with this name See this thread for information Susan Griffith is a freelance editor and writer who has specialized for than 25 years in writing books and articles about travel, especially working and volunteering abroad The first edition of her best known book Work Your Way Around the World was researched in 1982 mainly by listening attentively to the stories of travelers met abroad and by interviewing people summoned to the Nag s Head the pub behind her publisher s office in Oxford At that time she had plenty of personal experience of working abroad since she had left her native Canada after doing a degree in English at the University of Toronto to study at Oxford and then decided to stay on working in England.In the early 1980s so few guidebooks about funding yourself on the road were available that travelers were grateful for any scrap of information and encouragement The world of travel has changed dramatically since then Working abroad has become such a mainstream idea that it has given rise to scores of web sites student travel agencies have specialist working abroad departments and a huge infrastructure has developed for those who want to combine work and travel Work Your Way has grown up with the travel industry and now takes account of all the shortcuts to fixing up work abroad that now exist Personally updated every other year since its beginnings, it is now an acknowledged classic in the field Other titles which Susan has written and regularly updates include Teaching English Abroad which gives a comprehensive account of that booming business, Taking a Gap Year, The Au Pair Nanny s Guide to Working Abroad, and Gap Years for Grown Ups She has also been a contributing editor to Transitions Abroad since the early days of its publication and contributes occasional articles to the travel pages of The Independent, a British daily newspaper Her consistent aim has been to make her writing as concrete and up to the minute as possible, to cut out vague generalities and meaningless waffle.Susan has traveled relentlessly both for work and pleasure, and has spent substantial periods of time on her own in the Indian Subcontinent and the Antipodes including Papua New Guinea She also travels widely with her family including her partner, who is the Oxford Professor of Latin and is therefore interested in travel to ancient sites around the Mediterranean Now based in Cambridge, she is hoping that her twin sons who have hit adolescence will have imbibed a love of travel since she is all the convinced that a spell of independent travel in wild and woolly places is a good and necessary thing.