Susanna Kaysen was born on 11 November, 1948, and raised in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Her father is the economist Carl Kaysen (b.1920), formerly a
professor at MIT and advisor to President John F. Kennedy. In 1967 she
attended the Commonwealth School before being sent to McLean Hospital where she
underwent psychiatric treatment for depression for 18-months having been
diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Her first novel, Asa,
As I Knew Him, was published in 1987; followed by a second novel in 1990,
Far Afield. In 1993 she published the memoir that she is best known
for, Girl Interrupted, that drew on her experience at McLean Hospital.
It was made into a film in 1999. All her books draw on her own personal
experiences to varying degrees. She published a memoir, The Camera My
Mother Gave Me, in 2001.
This biography was last updated on 07/02/2011.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 2000 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that
some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date,
inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors:
If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new, including your website URL if relevant.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
Full Story
