The Penguin Speakers Bureau

Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, media matters, and family issues. Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood (Viking, 2005), her second book, has generated a new conversation about the choices women make as they age. The paperback version (Plume) was published in January 2006. To promote both editions she traveled widely and made numerous appearances on radio, on television, and in bookstores. First serial excerpts appeared in Ms. magazine and More magazine. Her previous book, Father Courage: What Happens When Men Put Family First (Harcourt, 2000), was excerpted in Ladies’ Home Journal and Ms. magazine and was featured on The Today Show. She is a contributor to the anthology Sisterhood Is Forever, edited by Robin Morgan (Atria Books, 2004).

Levine and Mary Thom just completed a biography of the late congresswoman Bella Abzug, compiled from Abzug’s own words and interviews with those who knew and worked with her, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Her new book, Fifty Is the New Fifty: Ten Life Lessons From Second Adulthood, was published by Viking in April of 2009.

Levine was editor in chief of The Columbia Journalism Review, the premier magazine of media criticism, from 1989 to 1997. Previously she was editor of Ms. magazine, the groundbreaking feminist magazine, from its founding in 1972 until 1988. During her tenure, the magazine fostered a new kind of personalized reporting and was recognized for its coverage of theretofore unreported issues that concerned women, from health and the arts to international politics and social policy.

While at Ms., she developed and produced the Peabody Award-winning television documentary She’s Nobody’s Baby: A History of American Women in the 20th Century (HBO, 1981) and edited the book of the same name that followed (Simon & Schuster). She also conceived and co-edited A Decade of Women: A Ms. History of the Seventies in Words and Pictures. Her essays have appeared in national publications including Newsweek, TV Guide, The Nation, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She is a contributing editor of More magazine. An article of hers in that magazine about the conflict between younger and older women caught the attention of Oprah producers and became the basis of a one-hour show on which she was featured.

She conceived, produced, and moderated several weeklong programs of lectures on American families at the Chautauqua Institution, a historical summer program of issues and culture. Participants included then-governor Bill Clinton, Fred Rogers, and Elisabeth Kübler Ross.

Levine has been a frequent guest on national television programs, including Oprah, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Charlie Rose, as well as numerous national and local radio shows. She has lectured widely before women’s and professional groups and on campuses across the country. She also writes a blog on her website www.SuzanneBraunLevine.com.

She has taught journalism at several universities, most recently at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. From 1989 to 1990, she was a fellow at the Media Studies Center of the Freedom Forum. She serves on a number of boards, including The Transition Network and the Ms. Foundation for Education and Communication, and is a member of the AARP’s Women’s Leadership Circle.

Suzanne Levine received her BA with honors from Harvard University. She has two grown children and lives in New York City with her husband, attorney Robert Levine.