Susan Dworkin

Playwright

Susan Dworkin is an American novelist and playwright. She has written half a dozen plays and published 14 books, among them the international bestseller The Nazi Officer's Wife, which has ranked in the top ten on multiple New York Times and Amazon best sellers lists. Several of her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and regionally, including The Public Good, which was produced at Playwrights Horizons.

Early stints at the US Department of Agriculture and as a journalist covering international aid projects left Susan with a fascination for all things farming. Her book, The Viking in the Wheat Field, a consumer-friendly guide to agricultural politics, is about the crusading seed banker, Dr. Bent Skovmand, and the future of world food security. Her play, The Farm Bill, chronicles the political awakening of a low level clerk at the mammoth USDA. 

For ten years, Susan was a contributing editor at Ms. Magazine, interviewing celebrities like Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, Carol Burnett, Danny Glover, and Roseanne Barr. Her classic film study, "Making Tootsie", investigates how Dustin Hoffman, Sydney Pollack and Jessica Lange made the great comedy of a man who must live for a while as a woman. Her biography of Bess Myerson at the Miss American Pageant, Miss America 1945, won honors from the New York State Historical Society.

Susan is a frequent guest speaker at academic and literary conferences. She also has appeared on news/talk programs including The Leonard Lopate Show, Living on Earth, and On Point with Tom Ashbrook.

         

Appears in
The Public Good