Life of Suzanne Braun Levine

Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor and nationally recognized authority on the ongoing changes in women’s lives. She was the first editor of Ms. magazine (1972-1988), and the first woman editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. In her books Levine has defined a new stage of life – Second Adulthood.

While at Ms., Levine developed and produced the Peabody-Award winning HBO special and book “She’s Nobody’s Baby: A History of American Women in the 20th Century” as well as “The Decade of Women: In Words and Pictures” and led the magazine to many journalism awards.

She created the annual week-long series of lectures about the family at the Chautauqua Institution. (Speakers included Bill Clinton, Margaret Mead and Mr. Rogers.) She was the guest Editor-in-Chief of the 30th Anniversary issue of Ms. magazine in 2002 and was honored by the magazine as a “Ms. Woman of the Year” in 2004. In 2020 she was named one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by WOMEN’SeNEWS. She was a presenter at TEDx Women in 2011 and was honored on MAKERS.com – the largest video collection of women’s stories – for Women’s History Month 2014. She is a founder (in 2016) of the Milford Readers and Writers Festival.

Levine is author of a series of books about women over fifty: INVENTING THE REST OF OUR LIVES, FIFTY IS THE NEW FIFTY, HOW WE LOVE NOW: Sex and the New Intimacy in Second Adulthood and YOU GOTTA HAVE GIRLFRIENDS: A Post-fifty Posse is Good for Your Health. She named the tumultuous transition to second adulthood “the Fertile Void,” coined the phrases “the Fuck-You Fifties,” and “No is not a four-letter word” to describe women’s new quest for authenticity.