Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was born in New York but grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. After graduating from the University of Chicago, she pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne's College, University of Oxford. She authored four novels ("The Benefactor," "Death Kit," "The Volcano Lover," "In America"—the latter two published in Greek by Odysseas Editions), a collection of short stories ("I, etcetera"), several plays ("Alice in Bed," "Lady From the Sea," among others), and eight essays, the most notable being "Against Interpretation" (published in Greek by Kafrefis), "On Photography" (published by the magazine "Photographer"), "Illness as Metaphor" (published by Ypsilon), "Regarding the Pain of Others" (published by Scripta), and "Where the Stress Falls." Her articles and prose appeared regularly in magazines such as "The New Yorker," "The New York Review of Books," "The Times Literary Supplement," "Art in America," "Antaeus," "Parnassus," "The Threepenny Review," "The Nation," "Granta," and many others. Her books have been translated into 32 languages to date. She also directed four feature films ("Duet for Cannibals," 1969, "Brother Carl," 1971—both in Sweden, "Promised Land," 1974, in Israel during the October 1973 war, and "Unguided Tour," 1983, in Italy) and directed many plays, including "Waiting for Godot" in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent a significant amount of time between 1993-1996 and was declared an honorary citizen. A political activist in the fight for human rights for over two decades, she served as president of the American PEN Club from 1987-1989 and participated in campaigns for freedom of expression and the release of intellectual creators persecuted for their views. Susan Sontag was highly awarded during her lifetime: she received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1978 for her essay "On Photography," the National Book Award in 2000 for the novel "In America," the Malaparte Prize in Italy in 1992, the title of "Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters" in France in 1999, the Jerusalem Prize in 2001 for her body of work, and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2003. She passed away on December 28, 2004, in New York.