Susan Shwartz, American author

Susan Shwartz (born December 31, 1949) is an American author.She received her B.A. in English from Mount Holyoke College in 1972 and a PhD in English from Harvard University.Shwartz's Heirs to Byzantium trilogy – Byzantium's Crown (1987), The Woman of Flowers (1987) and Queensblade (1988) is an alternate history series. The Heirs to Byzantium novels are set in a world where Marc Antony defeats Octavius in the Battle of Actium, and joins with Cleopatra to make Byzantium capital of the Roman Empire.Shwartz's novel The Grail of Hearts (1992) is a fantasy that features the Holy Grail. It also features a sympathetic version of Kundry from Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal; Shwart's Kundry is depicted as a version of the Wandering Jew.Shwartz has published several novels and sixty short stories.