Susan Sheehan (née Sachsel; born August 24, 1937) is an Austrian-born American writer.

Biography

Born in Vienna, Austria, she won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for her book Is There No Place on Earth for Me? The book details the experiences of a young New York City woman diagnosed with schizophrenia. Portions of the book were published in The New Yorker, for which she has written frequently since 1961 as a staff writer. Her work as a contributing writer has also appeared in The New York Times and Architectural Digest. In 1986, Sheehan published in The New Yorker "A Missing Plane," a three-part series about the U.S. Army's attempt to identify the remains of the victims of a 1944 airplane crash. Her husband was the journalist Neil Sheehan, whom she urged to copy what became known as the Pentagon Papers for the Times with her help, and who also won a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam in 1989. Sheehan and her husband lived in Washington, D.C.

Works

Her other works include: