About Dr Susan McLaine

Founder of Bibliotherapy Australia
Practitioner-theorist and pioneer of Heart-Centred Bibliotherapy

I am the founder of Bibliotherapy Australia and a practitioner-theorist whose work brings together lived reading practice, research, and close listening to how stories move within people and communities. Over many years, this work has shaped Heart-Centred Bibliotherapy as a presence-led approach to reading, one that honours reflection and the quiet wisdom of story.

My doctoral research was the first in the world to explore bibliotherapy from the facilitator’s perspective. This work expanded bibliotherapy in Australia, toward a relational, reflective practice. From this foundation, Heart-Centred Bibliotherapy emerged as a way of working that positions literature at its centre, a place, where insight can arise and meaning unfold in their own time.

A beginning shaped by story

Reading has always been my way of understanding life. Books were my refuge, the place where I first learned that story can steady us, soften us and invite us to see with new eyes. As a child, I fell in love with The Magic Faraway Tree, drawn into worlds where curiosity was rewarded and imagination could roam. Later, as a teenager, I hid in the bathroom with Gone with the Wind, discovering stories charged with longing and intensity, still far from my own life, yet shaping how I began to feel my way into it.

As I grew older, books became companions rather than hiding places. I turned to them not to escape the world, but to meet it more fully, to find language for what I was carrying, and to remember that others had stood where I was standing. Without my noticing, reading stopped being only something I did for myself. I began to sense how stories move between people, how a book placed gently into another pair of hands can open something there too.

In time, I came to recognise this as a felt responsibility. What had once steadied and accompanied me was asking to be offered with care. Not as advice or instruction, but as presence. Not to fix or resolve, but to sit alongside experience and make room for reflection, recognition and meaning. This turning, from private reader to attentive guide, shaped how I would come to work with story and with people.

Working with individuals, groups and communities

Alongside research, my years of working with diverse audiences have shown me that reflective reading always moves in two directions. It touches what lives within a person, and it moves through the relationships and communities around them. When story is met with presence, something shifts, both inside us and between us.

In my reading programs, individuals and groups are invited to pause, to notice, and to explore what is stirring. The guided reflections are gentle, shaped as if I am walking beside them, offering questions that make room for recognition and insight. Many people speak of feeling accompanied and gently held, as though someone is keeping them company as they read and reflect.

In training contexts, every program I design begins with the wellbeing of those who bring bibliotherapy to others. Awareness and reflective depth come before technique, before tools, before delivery. This work asks for presence before practice, inner steadiness before outward skill, and attentiveness to what is being carried beneath the surface.

Over time, certain responses to this work have stayed with me. Again and again, people speak of feeling met, not managed. Accompanied, not fixed. That recognition tells me something essential has been held, and it reflects what matters most to me in this work. 

This sense of accompaniment was beautifully captured in the following words:

“The closest thing to a hug.”
— The Guardian describing my bibliotherapy work

The ripple effect

My work has always grown from community. Several years ago, I was entrusted with designing a program and building a team of more than two hundred volunteers. Together, we cultivated a culture shaped by inclusion, trust and mutual regard, which was recognised with state awards. I remember with wonder of the warmth that moved between people, the way kindness became contagious.

The ripple of that work travelled much further than I expected. People across Australia reached out after encountering something of that presence, wanting to understand how such a culture had been created. 

Those years shaped me deeply. Seeing individuals and communities grow through care, connection and collective purpose remains one of the great joys of my work, and it continues to inform how I shape Bibliotherapy Australia today.

Growing the work of the heart

Across my years in this field, one belief has guided everything I do. When story is met with both heart and mind, when shaped as a living practice, it opens how we see and how we are, offering a more spacious and humane way of being, which ripples through relationships and communities.

This newest chapter of my work brings programs that weave together story, contemplation and heart-centred conversation. Each offering invites people to trust the tender inner movements that reading can awaken, and to carry that attentiveness into their own lives and communities.

A note on images

The images you see here are chosen with care.

Many are photographs taken by Dr Susan McLaine, offered as moments of light, presence and quiet attention. Rather than using staged or stock imagery, we favour images that arise from lived moments and gentle noticing.

Light, fabric, air and simple spaces appear often. These images are not meant to explain or illustrate, but to create a sense of welcome and ease, inviting you to pause and arrive.

They are shared as a small offering of grace and beauty, noticed and passed on.