Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was a notable author, philosopher, and political activist. She was born as Susan Rosenblatt on January 16, 1933, in New York City to Jewish parents of Polish and Lithuanian descent. After her parents' divorce, she moved with her mother to Tucson, Arizona, and later attended high school in Los Angeles. Sontag went on to receive her B.A. from the University of Chicago and did graduate work at Harvard University and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford.

Throughout her career, Sontag produced an extensive body of work that included four novels, a collection of short stories, several plays, and nine works of nonfiction. Some of her most notable books are "The Benefactor," "Death Kit," "The Volcano Lover," "In America," "I, etcetera," "Against Interpretation," "On Photography," "Illness as Metaphor," and "Regarding the Pain of Others." She also ventured into filmmaking, writing and directing four feature-length films and several plays, including "Alice in Bed" and "Lady from the Sea."

Sontag was a prominent human rights activist for over two decades, serving as the president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature. She was a strong advocate for persecuted and imprisoned writers and led numerous campaigns on their behalf. Sontag's works appeared in various newspapers, magazines, and literary publications worldwide, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.

Sontag's accolades include 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). She was also named a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1999. Sontag passed away in New York City on December 28, 2004.
Standalone Novels
# Title Year
1 The Benefactor 1963
2 Death Kit 1967
3 The Volcano Lover 1992
4 In America 2000
Plays
# Title Year
1 Duet for Cannibals 1969
2 Brother Carl 1974
3 Alice in Bed 1993
Collections
# Title Year
1 I, etcetera 1963
2 Against Interpretation and Other Essays 1964
3 A Susan Sontag Reader 1982
4 Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors 2013
5 Debriefing 2017
6 On Women 2023
Collections (with Benjamin Taylor)
# Title Year
1 I, etcetera 1963
2 Against Interpretation and Other Essays 1964
3 A Susan Sontag Reader 1982
4 Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors 2013
5 Debriefing (With: Benjamin Taylor) 2017
6 On Women 2023
Journals of Susan Sontag Books
# Title Year
1 Reborn 2008
2 As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh 2012
Non-Fiction Books
# Title Year
1 Notes on 1964
2 Against Interpretation 1966
3 Trip to Hanoi 1968
4 Styles of Radical Will 1969
5 The Art of Revolution 1970
6 On Photography 1973
7 Illness as Metaphor 1978
8 Under the Sign of Saturn 1980
9 AIDS and Its Metaphors 1989
10 Dancers on a Plane 1989
11 Women (With: Annie Leibovitz) 1999
12 Women 1999
13 Where the Stress Falls 2001
14 Regarding the Pain of Others 2003
15 At the Same Time 2007
16 Sontag on Film 2012
17 Essays of the 1960s & 70s 2013
18 Later Essays 2017
19 Susan Sontag on Women 2023
Literary Conversations Books
# Title Year
1 Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges 1969
2 Conversations with Czeslaw Milosz 1981
3 Conversations with Graham Greene 1983
4 Conversations with Eudora Welty 1985
5 Conversations with Walker Percy 1985
6 Conversations With Isaac Bashevis Singer 1985
7 Conversations with William Styron 1985
8 Conversations with Malcolm Cowley 1986
9 Conversations with Lillian Hellman 1986
10 Conversations with Tennessee Williams 1986
11 Conversations with Ernest Hemingway 1986
12 Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter 1987
13 Truman Capote: Conversations 1987
14 Conversations with Flannery O'Connor 1987
15 Conversations with Peter Taylor 1987
16 Conversations with Arthur Miller 1987
17 Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut 1988
18 Conversations with Edward Albee 1988
19 Conversations with Erskine Caldwell 1988
20 Conversations with Norman Mailer 1988
21 Conversations with Robert Graves 1989
22 Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates 1989
23 Conversations with Shelby Foote 1989
24 Conversations with Robertson Davies 1989
25 Conversations with James Baldwin 1989
26 Conversations with John Gardner 1990
27 Conversations with Richard Wilbur 1990
28 Conversations with Tom Wolfe 1990
29 Conversations with Raymond Carver 1990
30 Conversations with Eugene O'Neill 1990
31 Conversations with Reynolds Price 1991
32 Conversations with Bernard Malamud 1991
33 Conversations with Elizabeth Spencer 1991
34 Conversations with Nikki Giovanni 1992
35 Conversations With Thornton Wilder 1992
36 Conversations with Robert Coles 1992
37 Conversations with M. F. K. Fisher 1992
38 More Conversations with Walker Percy 1993
39 Conversations with Richard Wright 1993
40 Conversations with Paul Bowles 1993
41 Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris 1994
42 Conversations with Amiri Baraka 1994
43 Conversations with Toni Morrison 1994
44 Conversations with Saul Bellow 1994
45 Conversations with Henry Miller 1994
46 Conversations with Ernest Gaines 1995
47 Conversations with Ralph Ellison 1995
48 Conversations with Chester Himes 1995
49 Conversations with Susan Sontag 1995
50 Conversations with Ishmael Reed 1995
51 Conversations with Derek Walcott 1996
52 More Conversations with Eudora Welty 1996
53 Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop 1996
54 Conversations with Pauline Kael 1996
55 Conversations with V. S. Naipaul 1997
56 Conversations with N. Scott Momaday 1997
57 Conversations with Chinua Achebe 1997
58 Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston 1998
59 Conversations with Denise Levertov 1998
60 Conversations With William Faulkner 1999
61 Conversations with E. L. Doctorow 1999
62 Conversations With John Fowles 1999
63 Conversations with Salman Rushdie 2000
64 Conversations with William S. Burroughs 2000
65 Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko 2000
66 Conversations with Chaim Potok 2001
67 Conversations with Richard Ford 2001
68 Conversations with Christopher Isherwood 2001
69 Conversations with Mary Gordon 2002
70 Conversations with Jim Harrison 2002
71 Conversations with Clarence Major 2002
72 Conversations with Margaret Walker 2002
73 Conversations with Erica Jong 2002
74 Elie Wiesel: Conversations 2002
75 Joseph Brodsky: Conversations 2003
76 Conversations with Rita Dove 2003
77 Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald 2003
78 Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks 2003
79 Conversations with Stanley Kaufmann 2003
80 Conversations with Gloria Naylor 2004
81 Conversations with Audre Lorde 2004
82 Conversations with Ray Bradbury 2004
83 Conversations With John le Carré 2004
84 Conversations with Isaac Asimov 2005
85 Conversations with Don DeLillo 2005
86 Conversations with Gore Vidal 2005
87 Conversations with Robert Penn Warren 2005
88 Conversations with Jack Kerouac 2005
89 Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez 2005
90 Conversations with Thomas McGuane 2006
91 Conversations with Larry Brown 2007
92 Conversations with Sonia Sanchez 2007
93 Conversations with Wendell Berry 2007
94 Conversations with Leon Forrest 2007
95 Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro 2008
Susan Sontag Anthologies
# Title Year
1 New American Writing 1979
2 Granta 1: New American Writing 1979
3 Granta 5: The Modern Common Wind 1982
4 The Best American Essays 1992 1992
5 Robert Bresson 1999
6 The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction 1999
7 The Good Parts 2000
8 Wonderful Town 2000
9 The Best American Short Stories of the Century 2000
10 Writers on Writing 2001
11 Paperback L.A. Book 1 2018
12 Maestros & Monsters: Days & Nights with Susan Sontag & George Steiner 2023