Suzanne Buffam was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. She earned an MA in English from Concordia University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry collections include Past Imperfect (2005) and The Irrationalist (2010). She has received the CBC Literary Award for Poetry and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.

Reviewing The Irrationalist for TheStar.com, poetry columnist Barbara Carey commented that Buffam “rummages in metaphysics and skeptically eyes received wisdom […] occasionally upending it altogether.” Gilliam Jerome, writing of Past Imperfect in Canadian Literature, identified “a speaker self-consciously wary of mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.”

Buffam teaches at the University of Chicago.