Sarah Susanka
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BIOGRAPHY A thought leader, public speaker, and an acclaimed architect, Sarah is the bestselling author of seven books including The Not So Big House (Taunton, 1998), Home By Design (Taunton, 2004) and most recently, The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters (Random House, 2007). In September 2008, Susanka’s groundbreaking first book, The Not So Big House, is being re-released as a special 10th anniversary edition with a new cover, introduction and a new chapter. In early 2009, Susanka, along with home design writer Marc Vassallo, will release Not So Big Remodeling: A Better House for the Way You Really Live. Susanka has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including "Oprah," "Charlie Rose," and "Diane Rehm," and has received many accolades for her work. Fast Company named Sarah to their debut list of "Fast 50" innovators whose achievements have helped to change society, Newsweek magazine selected her as a "top newsmaker" for 2000, and U.S. News and World Report dubbed her an "innovator in American culture" in 1998. Susanka was presented with the 2007 Anne Morrow Lindbergh Award by the Lindbergh Foundation for outstanding individual achievement, demonstrating a spirit of initiative and exemplifying great dedication toward making positive contributions to our world. In her Not So Big House series of books, Susanka has helped readers understand that the sense of "home" they're seeking has almost nothing to do with quantity, and everything to do with quality. She points out that we feel "at home" in our houses when where we live reflects who we are in our hearts. In her latest book, The Not So Big Life, she uses this same set of notions to explain that we can feel "at home" in our lives only when what we do reflects who we truly are. A master in the use of metaphor to help explain new dimensions of understanding, Susanka unveils a process for changing the way we live by fully inhabiting each moment of our lives and by showing up completely in whatever it is we are doing. This process of self discovery, described in The Not So Big Life, has provided the compass and formed the core of Sarah's true avocation as student of life. Through this process of inner work, readers discover more meaningfulness and vitality in their own lives. What makes Susanka an unusually effective teacher in the art of living more consciously is that she has learned what she knows by living an ordinary life, filled with all the normal challenges of family and career. Brought up in England by parents with little interest in spirituality, she was able to develop and integrate a non-denominational spiritual practice into her everyday life from an early age, using every circumstance, friendship, and passion as the nutrients for inner growth. Though she is very much engaged in the world as architect, author, and speaker, Susanka doesn’t identify those things as her reason for being. Through all her various expressions, architectural and literary, she is able to convey a different way of being in the world - fully engaged in it, but not defined by it. Whether writing about a new blueprint for home design or a new blueprint for living, Susanka has a gift for making the complex simple and for demystifying even the most obscure and esoteric of subject matter. She invites you to explore more at www.notsobiglife.com. |
SARAH SUSANKA