Susan Sheehan (née Sachsel; born August 24, 1937)
is an Austrian-born
American writer.
Biography
Born in
Vienna
en, Viennese
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, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, Austria,
she won the
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1983 for her book ''
Is There No Place on Earth for Me?''
The book details the experiences of a young
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
woman diagnosed with
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social wi ...
.
Portions of the book were published in ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...
'', for which she has written frequently since 1961 as a staff writer.
Her work as a contributing writer has also appeared in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' and ''
Architectural Digest
''Architectural Digest'' is an American monthly magazine founded in 1920. Its principal subjects are interior design and landscaping, rather than pure external architecture. The magazine is published by Condé Nast, which also publishes internat ...
''.
In 1986, Sheehan published in ''The New Yorker'' "A Missing Plane," a three-part series about the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
’s attempt to identify the remains of the victims of a 1944 airplane crash. In ''About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made'',
Ben Yagoda
Ben Yagoda (born 22 February 1954) is an American writer and educator. He is a professor of journalism and English at the University of Delaware.
Early life
Born in New York City to Louis Yagoda (1909-1990), a labor mediator and arbitrator with ...
called the article "exhaustive and ultimately exhausting."
Her husband was the journalist
Neil Sheehan
Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan (October 27, 1936 – January 7, 2021) was an American journalist. As a reporter for ''The New York Times'' in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified ''Pentagon Papers'' from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles reve ...
, who also won a
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
for ''
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam'' in 1989.
Sheehan and her husband lived in
Washington, D.C.
)
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Works
Her other works include:
*1967 ''Ten Vietnamese''
*1976 ''A welfare mother''
*1978 ''A prison and a prisoner''
*1984 ''Kate Quinton's days''
*1986 ''A missing plane''
*1993 ''Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair''
*2002 ''The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer: Hobbies, Collecting, and Other Passionate Pursuits'' (co-written with Howard Means)
Further reading
*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sheehan, Susan
1937 births
Writers from Vienna
Hunter College High School alumni
Living people
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners
Wellesley College alumni
20th-century American writers
20th-century American women writers
American women journalists
20th-century American journalists
Austrian emigrants to the United States
21st-century American women