Susan Schoenberger, a West Hartford editor and writer, has been named Director of Communications at Hartford Seminary. Prior to starting at the seminary in July, Susan was an associate regional editor for Patch.com, where she supervised 12 hyperlocal websites in the AOL-owned Patch network. The sites included West Hartford Patch and sites across the Farmington Valley, among others.

Before Patch, Susan was a copy editor at The Hartford Courant for 12 years. There, she worked mainly in the news department editing stories and writing headlines. Between 1989 and 1995, Susan worked at The Baltimore Sun as a copy editor and then as the assistant national editor. She has also been a reporter for various newspapers, including the News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C., The Day in New London and the Register Citizen in Torrington.

In addition to journalism, Susan writes fiction. Her first novel, A Watershed Year, won the William Faulkner William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2006 and was published by Guideposts Books in 2011. A Watershed Year will be re-released by Amazon Publishing this year, and her second novel is under contract for release in 2014.

Susan brings her passion for words and social media to the seminary, where she looks forward to sharing the institution’s stories with a wider audience.

“Hartford Seminary is such a unique place,” Susan said. “Once you walk through those landmark white doors and learn about the important and exciting work happening here, you want to be part of it. I’m looking forward to getting the word out.”