Born in New York City to a Tunisian father and a Swiss mother, Suleika Jaouad attended The Juilliard School’s pre-college program for the double bass, and earned her BA with highest honors from Princeton University and an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. Leaving music behind, she thought she’d be a war correspondent, but her plans were cut short when, at age 22, she was diagnosed with leukemia that led to a brutal 4-year stint in and out of the hospital, with multiple rounds of chemo, and a bone marrow transplant.
She began writing her New York Times column and Emmy-award winning video-series “Life, Interrupted” from her hospital room at Sloan-Kettering, and has written reported features, essays and commentary for New York Times Magazine, Vogue and NPR, among other publications. Suleika served on Barack Obama’s Presidential Cancer Panel, the national advisory board of the Bone Marrow and Cancer Foundation, and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Arts & Letters Committee. She is also the creator of the Isolation Journals, a community creativity project founded during the Covid-19 pandemic to help others convert isolation into artistic solitude; over 100,000 people from around the world have joined. Her debut memoir, Between Two Kingdoms, is a gorgeously written exploration of so many moments, people and stories that have led to her this moment in life.
You can find Suleika Jaouad at: Website | Instagram
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