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Susan Dworkin wrote the New York Times best seller, The Nazi Officer’s Wife, a true story of love and terror in the Third Reich, with the woman who lived it, the late Edith Hahn Beer. Other non-fiction includes Miss American 1945, a definitive biography of beauty queen Bess Myerson’s early years. It won honors from the New York State Historical Society. Susan's behind-the-scenes film studies, Making Tootsie (how to make an hilarious movie when you are working with people you can't stand) and Double De Palma (how to terrify your audience with one long brilliant tracking shot), are regularly used in film schools.
Armed with experience at the US Department of Agriculture and as a journalist covering huge development projects in Iran and Turkey, Susan turned her attention to the all-important subject of seed banking. Her biography of the crusading seed banker Dr. Bent Skovmand shone a new light on the critical misjudgments of modern American corporate agriculture.
Her novels include Stolen Goods, a story of love and larceny in the 80s; The Commons, a futuristic tale of an agrarian revolt led by a young pop star; The Book of Candy, about a suburban housewife on a journey of political awakening; and The Garden Lady, whose heroine seeks redemption for her sins by building a great public garden in the middle of a stinking sanitary landfill.
Susan’s plays include Looking for the Graphic Pueblo (formerly The Miami Dig) about a woman’s search for family history in her father-in-law’s riotous Miami apartment; The Baking Song, about a struggle between a gifted musicologist and her zoologist lover on a freezing Boston evening; The Book of Candy, adapted from her novel of the same name, a re-imagined Purim Play starring that suburban houswife as a contemporary Queen Esther; The Farm Bill, in which a low level clerk at the USDA attempts to overthrow American farm policy, and The Old Mezzo, in which a great opera diva tours her students through her life under fascism. Her newest play is All Day Suckers, a dark comedy about a young woman’s attempts to care for her ailing father in today’s health care system.
Susan’s plays have been performed at theatres in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California, including the WPA Theater, the Lark, WAM Theatre, NJ Theatre Workshop, Bergenstage and the New York Fringe.
Susan was a long-time contributing editor to Ms. Magazine. In partnership with Dr. Cynthia W. Cooke, she wrote The Ms. Guide to a Woman’s Health (nominated for a National Book Award) , as well as a regular column that often unnerved the medical establishment. Her column “The Thinking Woman’s Theatre” celebrated women starting out in show business who would later become superstars (Whoopi Goldberg, Meryl Streep) and veteran show business women too little known by the general public (Stella Adler, Jane Alexander, set designer Marjorie Bradley Kellogg.)
Susan lives outside of Boston and in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts. She is a popular lecturer and loves to meet her readers. To reach her, contact dividedlightprojects@gmail.com. Or write to her at her website, www.susandworkin.com.
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