Sontag's many honors are the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.Īmong Ms. Her stories and essays appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary publications all over the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America, Antaeus, Parnassus, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, and Granta. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.

Sontag also directed plays in the United States and Europe, including a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent much of the time between early 19 and was made an honorary citizen of the city.Ī human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Another play, Lady from the Sea, has been produced in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Korea. Her play Alice in Bed has had productions in the United States, Mexico, Germany, and Holland. Sontag wrote and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both in Sweden Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973 and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy. In 1982, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published A Susan Sontag Reader. Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America a collection of short stories, I, etcetera several plays, including Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea and nine works of nonfiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford. Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles.

On photography by susan sontag