Suleika Jaouad

Activist, Change agent, Journalist, Writer/Editor

Suleika Jaouad (pronounced Su-lake-uh Ja-wad) is an Emmy Award-winning writer, speaker, activist and cancer survivor. She wrote the acclaimed New York Times column “Life, Interrupted” and is the subject of the accompanying video series, which chronicled her journey with leukemia throughout her twenties. Her highly anticipated debut memoir, Between Two Kingdoms, is forthcoming from Random House in 2020. Born in New York City to a Tunisian father and a Swiss mother, Suleika attended The Juilliard School's pre-college program for the double bass and received her B.A. with highest honors from Princeton University with a concentration in Near Eastern Studies and Gender Studies. Suleika’s career aspirations as a war correspondent were cut short when, at age 22, less than a year after graduation, she was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia. After nearly four years of chemotherapy, a clinical trial and a bone marrow transplant, she is now in remission. She began writing the “Life, Interrupted” column and filming the accompanying video series from the bone marrow transplant unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and has since become a fierce advocate for those living with illness and chronic pain. She served on Barack Obama's Presidential Cancer Panel, and sits on the national advisory boards of Family Reach and The Bone Marrow Foundation. Suleika travels the world teaching, speaking and leading creative writing retreats. She has appeared on The Today Show, NPR's Talk of The Nation, PBS, The Paris Review, Vogue, Into The Gloss, The Los Angeles Times and Darling Magazine, among others. When Suleika is not on the road with her Volkswagen camper van and badly behaved rescue mutt Oscar, she lives in Brooklyn.