Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 - December 28, 2004) was a well-known American essayist, novelist, intellectual, filmmaker and activist.
Sontag’s literary career began and ended with works of fiction. At age 30, she published an experimental novel called The Benefactor (1963), following it four years later with Death Kit (1967). Despite a relatively small output in the genre, Sontag thought of herself principally as a novelist and writer of fiction. Her short story “The Way We Live Now” was published to great acclaim in 1986 in “The New Yorker”. It was as an essayist, however, that Sontag gained early and enduring fame and notoriety. Sontag wrote frequently about the intersection of high and low art. Her celebrated 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” examined an alternative sensibility to seriousness and comedy, gesturing to the “so bad it’s good” concept in popular culture for the first time.
In 1989 Sontag was the President of PEN American Center, the main U.S. branch of the International PEN writer’s organization, at the time that Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (in this instance a death sentence) against writer Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses”, which was perceived as blasphemous by Islamic fundamentalists. Her uncompromising support of Rushdie was critical in rallying American writers to his cause.
Sontag died in New York City at aged 71, from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome evolving into acute myelogenous leukemia.
Source - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag
