Susan Gordon Lydon

Susan Lydon was an American writer, journalist and feminist. She is the author of a memoir about her drug abuse and recovery, two books on knitting and the 1970 essay "The Politics of Orgasm," as well as numerous articles from her work as journalist.

Born in the Bronx, New York, and raised on Long Island, she graduated in history from Vassar College in 1964. She met and married Michael Lydon in 1965, and the two moved to England, where they began careers in journalism. They returned to the United States in 1967. After joining women's consciousness-raising groups, Lydon became a feminist. She penned critiques of male-centered sexuality and divorced her husband in 1971.

Through the 1970s and '80s, Lydon suffered an addiction to drugs, a journey detailed in her 1993 memoir Take the Long Way Home. In the later part of the '80s, she developed a passion for knitting, which became the subject of two nonfiction works.

She died of cancer at 61.