Susan Nussbaum

Nussbaum was born in Chicago and raised in nearby Highland Park, the daughter of Mike Nussbaum and Annette Brenner Nussbaum. Her father, a former exterminator, became a well-known actor and director;[3] her mother was a publicist.[2] Her sister Karen Nussbaum is a noted labor leader.[4]

Nussbaum studied acting at Roosevelt University and Goodman School of Drama, both in Chicago. Nussbaum used a wheelchair after she survived being hit by a car in her twenties.[5] "When I became a wheelchair user in the late '70s," she wrote in a 2012 essay, "all I knew about being disabled I learned from reading books and watching movies, and that scared the shit out of me."[6]

As a performer, Nussbaum appeared a comic revue, Staring Back (1984),[7] as Emma Goldman in Frank Galati's She Always Said, Pablo (1987), in another comic review, The Plucky and Spunky Show (1990),[8] in her own one-woman show, Mishuganismo, directed by her father, in Activities of Daily Living (1994),[9] and in No One As Nasty (2000).[10] She worked with Marca Bristo on Access Living,[11][12] and started a group of disabled girls and young women, The Empowered FeFes.[13][14][15] She directed a production of Michael Vitali's G-Man! (1995),[9] and two productions of Mike Ervin's The History of Bowling (1999).[2][16]

Riva Lehrer painted a portrait of Nussbaum in 1998.[16][17] In 2008, Nussbaum was named one of Utne Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." Her debut novel Good Kings, Bad Kings (2013) won the 2012 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.[18][19] The novel is set in an institution for disabled young people in the Chicago area.[20][21]

• Staring Back (1983, sketch comedy show, co-written with Lawrence Perkins)[7]
• The Plucky and Spunky Show (1990)[8]
• Mishuganismo (1992, play)[22]
• Telethon (1993, play, co-written with William Hammack)[9]
• Activities of Daily Living (1994, play, co-writer)[23]
• No One as Nasty (2000, play)[10]
• Crippled Sisters (play)[24]
• "Why are Fictional Characters with Disabilities So Unreal?" (2012, essay)[6]
• Good Kings, Bad Kings (2013, novel)[25]
• Code of the Freaks (2020, documentary, co-written and co-produced by Nussbaum)[26]

Nussbaum had a daughter, Taina Rodriguez.[24] She died from pneumonia in 2022, at the age of 68, at her home in Chicago.[1][2]

• Susan Nussbaum's 2014 lecture for One Book Villanova, on YouTube
• An episode of Distopia, a disability-focused podcast hosted by Christopher Smit, featuring an interview with Nussbaum