At Story Playscapes, our Australian boutique publishing house, we are proud to produce the exquisite written works of our internationally acclaimed best-selling artisan author, theatre practitioner and illustrator, Susan L. Marshall. As our founder and artist director, Susan is richly inspired by nature and classical techniques, bringing her unique literary architecture of Soulful Formalism (coined 4 May, 2026), to her refined literary ecosystem of work here at Story Playscapes.

This is evident in her pioneering and creation of contemporary metaphysical literature, through her signature Fragmentique technique and elevation of Romantic Academia to a codified literary convention; her pioneering of Soulful Formalism as a literary architecture; her Theatre Playscapes theatrical style; her professional publications and her My Story Meadow Project and Romantic Spirit Alight Readers’ Garden, which she shares with a dedicated global readership. The main purpose / aim of Susan’s work is to provide a place where one can: “discover and rest in literary architecture, designed specifically as a sanctuary of integrity for the depths of the Romantic Spirit and its human soul.”

Susan’s signature Fragmentique is a unique contemporary metaphysical literature technique that Susan has developed, refined and used to create more than 40 professional publications, which places both the writer and the reader at the heart of story discovery and journey. She is a multifaceted artist, who has a strong passion and connection with the natural world. She has a special interest in the way that light falls, fractures and shifts, etc. and the way it leads her to rediscover a fragment of nature. Light brings Susan: “beginnings of perception, connection and can catalyse cause and effect. It proudly displays other energies (kinetic, mechanical, etc.) in the way it glows, offering fractured views of the world that mesmerise me and provide deep connection.” In her moments of fragment discovery, Susan finds a thrill in the beginnings of mystery. Using Fragmentique’s original contemporary metaphysical literary conventions: Heightened Energy and Metaphysical Noir et Blanc, Susan seeks to discover and be inspired by information in order to begin to metaphysically reconstruct her fragment discoveries into a narrative.

To learn more about Fragmentique, you can read Susan’s monumental essay: Fragmentique: Susan L. Marshall’s Signature Technique.

Susan’s connection with natural fragments, that are revealed in light fractures, evolves uniquely. She has always appreciated the classical history of the fragment. Authors like Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Homer, from Ancient Greek Antiquity, inspired her with the lyrical beauty of their fragments, which taught her about the deeper meanings behind heroic actions, ontology, perception and journey, along with the importance of pathos and catharsis for cleansing the spirit and providing wellbeing. Aristotle himself, provides Susan with her grounding of metaphysical philosophy and its importance in our contemporary world.

The Renaissance era is a deep source of inspiration for Susan, especially through its art, literature and architecture. Her travels and learning in Florence helped her to unearth her own wild soul and its artistry. She is particularly fond of Petrarch’s sonnets and their use of lyrical fragments to capture persona and story in the most simple-complex arrangement. Susan greatly admires Renaissance visual art techniques and the ways that these can be used as inspiration to nurture and reconstruct her located fragments. Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo Da Vinci (Sfumato) are also of high inspiration for her from this era. Susan also adores the Baroque era, particularly Johannes Vermeer‘s unique work with Chiaroscuro (contrast between light and dark) and Sfumato (blending, blurring edges, and soft transitions of tone) to create the intimacy of his works.

Impressionist art techniques are also a passion for Susan: Claude Monet (whose home and garden she visited, in Giverny, France) and his passion for the instantaneous use of light on landscapes and subjects during different times of day. She admires Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s use of luminous colours and shimmering light, to capture fleeting moments within the day. Susan also appreciates Camille Pissarro’s use of light to reveal the deeper truth in landscapes and moments.

Susan uses her inspirations from her favourite artists to create her original, artful written word. Susan says: “my use of my signature Fragmentique, involves me drawing from my deep connections with the fragments of light and aspects of nature that it illuminates (e.g. leaves, colours, light fall, feathers, raindrops, etc.) and their energies, to create a rich, metaphysical palette that I, for example: sort, spilt, blend, blur, dot, streak, mix, dab, etch and attune myself to.” Susan’s approach to her work is at once observational, immersive and curious … she enjoys seeking the deeper mystery behind the fragment and how it can be reconstructed to reveal the intrigue, wonder and awe of the metaphysical philosophy of the every day moment. She is particularly renown for her unique metaphysical noir et blanc and distinctive heightened energy, which she uses to curate her moments and stories from fragments.

Susan’s reconstructive and active interaction with fragments positions her work between the Romantic and Modernist eras. She shares her passions for the work of Romanticist authors, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose lyrical poetry and its fragments reflected the sublime beauty of the untamed and divine landscape, that could never be quite completed in its description. Susan also enthralls at the darker tones of Emily Bronte’s work (along with the Bronte sisters’ poetry) and how it captures the spiritual, psychological and emotional connections between spirit, person and environment. She also appreciates the modernist take on the fragment and its response to WWI through experimental forms, like stream of consciousness and surrealism, to reflect the fragmented, technological and modern world. Susan admires the lyrical, emotive and psychological works of Tenessee Williams, who etched his characters in ways that mirror the fierce beauty of humanity in chaos. She also enjoys Samuel Beckett’s existential explorations of life through world and character. Susan admires modern authors like Virginia Woolf, who refuted the significance of the complete novel and implored the literary world and society to consider the role of fragments as the intense and revealing moments / thoughts of the fleeting mind. The discourses of these times, are highly inspirational for Susan’s work, as she works with the mysteries of her fragments to reconcile character external journey with inner landscape, in a continuously changing world.

A monumental achievement for Susan is her original Theatre Playscapes style, which she developed, drawing upon more than two decades of her experiences as a professional author, theatre practitioner and expert educator. Susan’s travels through the Luberon Villages of France, particularly visiting locations such as: Lourmarin, Rousillon and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, provided her with rich interactions with light and sensory fragments, the wildness of nature and a wonderful connection with the people and lifestyle of the villages.

Further supported by her research into the psychological and educational psychological theories of: Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget and Abraham Maslow; along with the physics of energy and philosophical theories on the foundation and impacts of individualism during contemporary globalisation, Susan officially developed her Theatre Playscapes style.

Placing the wellbeing of young adults at its centre, the theatre style works to help them find the balance of their cognitive and energetic explorations of the worlds in which they live. Susan gifted the theatre style with the conventions of: heightened energy, transformation of moment, animated lifeworld, situational pull, spirit of character and immersive language. These conventions help to encourage immersion, self development and to provide focus to theatrical explorations, working to meet the growth needs of the young adult at varying life stages.

Susan’s premiere essay on the theatre style: Theatre Playscapes: A New Theatrical Style was formally announced and published in 2023, accompanied by the premiere dramatic literature: Fleur of Yesterday. The latter was inspired by her travels in France and her discoveries of precious fragments of life and nature, which led to her further extensive research into plant breeding; resulting in a play that speaks for the precious life of the wildflower. Susan’s second dramatic literature using the Theatre Playscapes style: All the Hope We Carry (also published in 2023),involved her drawing upon fragments of her family’s and historical experiences of war survival of World War II in Gozo and Malta. Accompanied by her essay: Theatre Playscapes of Hope, the publication aims to encourage young adults to develop autonomy through their own special presence and resilience.

Susan’s pioneering of Contemporary Metaphysical Literature takes a Soulful Formalist Approach. She uses a range of contemporary techniques to provide a structural intersection of literary and visual art with maths /science that serves two purposes: to guide the reader towards emotional resonance and an intellectual homecoming.

Genre itself is a fragment in Susan’s work. Using Metaphysical philosophy as her foundation, she will draw conventions from genres that are appropriate to add artistic and strucutral rigour to her stories. Susan views genre as a way to connect with the intricacies of the world and its structures with a contemporary voice and has used more than 16 genres already in the construction of her works. Susan is renown to radically genre bend, adding a metaphysical ontology to a genre fragment that brings fresh light to its exploration in story.

The theories of post structuralism also inspire Susan, particularly the works of Michel Foucault and his theories of power, knowledge and discourse. Such works on the use of fragmentation and fragments themselves by authors like Roland Barthes and David Mitchell, showed her how fixed meanings can be broken apart through multiplicity, instability, and the fluid nature of language; along with the many truths to be conveyed in the vast world. Post structuralist works confirmed for Susan, the importance of the multiple meanings and representations of the self and its multiple truths in our expansive world. A concept she explores, even through the intimacy of her Fragmentique technique. For Susan, tiny fragments can be found in the vastness of the world, along with the internal states of her characters.

Susan’s works are non-linear in structure as she does not feel that works should be tied to a single through line or one genre. She believes in using her metaphysical palette that contains natural and sensory fragments: curating works using words that are etched from her fragment finds, metaphysical philosophy, genre choices and literary / artistic inspirations. Her works transition between moments and genres effortlessly, providing a fluid, kaleidoscopic story for the reader. She is also renown to expertly omit information and to control the pacing of her story in ways that evoke the mystery for the reader.

Susan’s works commonly reflect the yearnings and spiritual pursuit of Romanticism, along with the motivation and internal landscapes required to take on the challenges of an ever changing world (as per modernist ideology). The wondrous dual nature of her work, leads to more than the character’s journey. It places the reader at the centre of the experience. They too, investigate as they read, filling in the gaps with their own discoveries. Susan’s written works can present as a metaphysical gallery, which not only allows readers to absorb her suspended, visual and refined moments, yet also creates a space for the reader to inhabit.

This type of work also continues in her global literacy initiative: the My Story Meadow project here at Story Playscapes, where she shares short excerpts from her writing etudes on fragments and discusses her techniques used with a global readership. Many of Susan’s works began their breaths of life in this project and went on to become best-selling publications. Susan also used inspiration from her research into healing gardens around the world to create our Romantic Spirit Alight Readers’ Garden online here at Story Playscapes. Readers can visit the Garden and immerse themselves in spiritual energy and flow discovered in quotes / fragments displayed from Susan’s major professional publications. Such immersion in the space is also designed to provide the reader with a chance to treat their own wellbeing.

Beyond the ‘broken’ view, historically, that fragments took in historical literary eras, Susan’s innovative work challenges such perceptions. She does not view the universe as whole, yet in fragments. She views the fragment as an active entity that can be equipped with ontology (meaning) and can be associated with greater life exploration for humanity. It is Susan’s masterful art, in reconstructing separated fragments, to develop work that is often paradoxical, profound and deeply emotional in nature, that sets her apart. Her writing style echoes a lyrical, mystical and Romantic quality, sometimes surrealist, evoking wonder and awe. As a Soulful Formalist Style, her work seeks a way to unify discovered world and character fragments; in order to set the Romantic Spirit alight for both her characters and her beloved readers. It is a spirit that she believes is eternal in human nature, that is very important in a world so full of change and progression at such a rapid pace.

Susan’s extensive body of work reveals her healing nature and dedication to the wellbeing of her readership in our demanding and busy world. She aims to make contemporary metaphysical literature a source of healing, nourishment and as a unique way to alight the Romantic spirit within the precious, diverse and challenging moments of the every day.

Susan’s major professional publications, published here at Story Playscapes, are categorised as Contemporary Metaphysical Literature and Romantic Academia. They are available at all good book retailers in more than 200 countries and territories around the world.

To read more about how Soulful Formalism works as a style in more detail, visit our Romantic Spirit Alight Readers’ Garden. You can also discover our internationally acclaimed publications that use Soulful Formalist styling in The Contemporary Metaphysical Collection below.