User:Twilson r/Sandbox/Sue Booth-Forbes

Susan Booth-Forbes (formerly Paxman, née Larson), is a teacher, writer and literary editor. She edited the Mormon women's journal Exponent II from 1984 to 1997, and has operated the Anam Cara Writer's and Artist's Retreat in West Cork, Ireland since 1998, hosting and supporting more than 1,000 writers and other creative artists.

Early life
Susan Larson was born to Clinton (1919-1994) and Naomi Larson (née Barlow) (1923-2010) of Provo, Utah, U.S.; her grandfather was the athlete Clinton Larson. Her father was an academic at Brigham Young University, and a poet and playwright; he was the university's poet-in-residence for many years. She has one sister. Diane Larson Porter,

Virginia
Larson studied at Brigham Young University (BYU) and started her teaching career, in Utah, in 1966. She moved to Charlottesville, Virginia in 1969, when her husband John M Paxman, also a graduate of BYU, became a student at the University of Virginia School of Law. She held teaching posts in local schools and after being denied a renewal of contract as an English teacher at Albemarle High School in summer 1971 due to a pregnancy with a due date in December, she, as the family's main breadwinner (her husband held a part-time post in Washington, D.C. at the Federal Judicial Center), had to find new work. She then secured her first editorial work, as an editorial researcher at the University of Virginia Medical School, working up to her last week of pregnancy.

The Gough-Paxman case
Paxman, who stated that she had been surprised by the restrictive Virginia maternity rules, as those in Utah had been more flexible, and shocked when the county school board upheld the initial decision, became one of two plaintiffs in a suit challenging rules across Virginia around employment discrimination due to pregnancy, winning a declaration of the unconstitutionality of such rules in 1975, and damages to include lost pay, but, on appeal, concluded in 1980, losing recompense other than an entitlement to reinstatement and partial cover for legal fees. While originally certified as a class action potentially including all pregnant teachers in the state, it was later decertified, but after an early ruling in the case, in 1972 the discriminatory rules were dismantled anyway.

Greater Boston
Susan Paxman lived for a period in the greater Boston area, including in Arlington, Massachusetts. She was a member of the team producing Exponent II, a magazine by and largely for Mormon women, from its second issue in October 1974 until 1997 and in some form to at least 2007. After a period taking the lead on sport, she served as its fourth Editor from spring 1984 until 1997, as Susan L. or Sue Paxman until 1996, then as Sue Booth-Forbes. The magazine addressed a wide range of issues, including reproductive rights, peace campaigns and the roles and potential of women. Paxman's husband also worked as a lawyer and advisor in the area of reproductive rights, and published a number of books and papers.

In 1993 Paxman also served for three weeks as on-set personal guardian (a Screen Actors Guild-mandated role) for actress Eliza Dushku, whose mother, Judith Rasmussen Dushku, a fellow Mormon from the same region and a friend, was also on the Exponent II team. Booth-Forbes later backed Eliza Dushku when she alleged an off-set sexual assault by a member of the production team - which Dushku at the time reported only to her mother, a brother, and a family friend - and commented on the overall industry situation at that time.

Booth-Forbes also worked for the Cambridge University Press.

Ireland
Following divorce, looking for a new direction, and having multiple retreats linked to Exponent II, and a prolonged literary retreat with friends in Connemara, Booth-Forbes established a residential creative retreat location. In December 1997 she searched with her daughter and purchased a property in the small village of Eyeries on the West Cork part of the Beara Peninsula, launching the Anam Cara Writers Retreat in summer 1998. Over twenty years, more than 1,000 creative guests - writers, composers, choreographers, visual artists - have since visited, leaving more than 500 works on the shelves in the common areas of the house. The house itself is at the centre of a multi-acre space with more than thirty private working alcoves, some on a landscaped river bank. Booth-Forbes describes her work with some guests as that of a "literary midwife" and also as partly modelled on the way her mother looked after her poet father, and several guests have dedicated a work to her.

Aside from her work as director of the Anam Cara Retreat, Booth-Forbes remains active in local fundraising and literary activities, as well as promotion and news-gathering for the local area.

Personal life
Booth-Forbes has two children and as of 2014, three grandchildren. She became an Irish citizen in 2012.