ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Bell is the author of The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself (W.W. Norton & Co., August, 2007), and co-author with Jason West of Dare to Hope: Saving American Democracy, a collection of essays on political activism (Miramax, 2005). She has written for several venues, including Tin House, Vogue, The London Sunday Telegraph, and National Public Radio. Bell is the writer and co-creator, with Mitch Epstein, of "What is American Power?", a not-for-profit billboard and website project to encourage responsible energy production and consumption (launch: Ohio, April 22, 2010). A former editor at Random House and Conjunctions magazine, she created a seminar on self-editing for the New School's Graduate Writing Program in New York City, and continues to teach there. Bell lectures at the Tin House Writer's Workshop in Portland, Oregon. Born in Massachusetts, she has lived in New York City since 1984, when she attended graduate school at Columbia University and earned a Master's degree in French Literature.