Biography

Susan Freinkel is a science writer whose work has appeared in a variety of national publications including: Discover, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, The New York Times, OnEarth, Health, and Real Simple. In 2005, she was awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, which allowed her to conduct much of the research for American Chestnut. The book won a 2008 National Outdoor Book Award.

A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freinkel began her career as a reporter at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon in Wichita, Kansas. She soon became one of the paper’s lead project writers, working on series that explored such diverse issues as: AIDS in the heartland, the precarious state of rural hospitals, the brain drain from Kansas, the changing nature of families. In 1989, Freinkel moved to San Francisco and began covering legal affairs and the business of law for The Recorder newspaper and American Lawyer magazine. Her career took a whole new direction in 1998 when she joined the staff of Health magazine and started writing about consumer health and medicine. Since 2000, she has worked as a freelance writer.

Her interests run wide. She has covered subjects ranging from adoption to weight control, coyote hunts to mad cow disease, new psychiatric treatments to the quest to develop a blue rose -- not to mention trees and plastic.

Freinkel is a member of North 24th Writers and Word of Mouth Bay Area (WOMBA). She lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.