Peter Y. Sussman spent most of his career as an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. He remains a vocal advocate on issues of journalism ethics, diversity and freedom of information, especially news media access to prisoners (and vice versa), and he was a co-author in 1996 of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.
He is also the co-author, with prison writer Dannie M. Martin, of Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog. He has written many booklets, book chapters and freelance articles, and since leaving the Chronicle he has taught and lectured as well.
Full Bio“I’m competing for eyeballs with millions of narcissists.” — Rick Redfern, Blogger
Blogs
“The Unhyphenated Family”
The following essay first appeared in the “Insight” section of the San Francisco Chronicle on January 22, 2017, two days after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
The question my 9-year-old grandson brought home from school just after the election was all the evidence I needed that the members of my vibrant, multiracial family have become canaries in Donald Trump’s toxic new America. We are foremost a family, in law and in fact; that we are also a multiracial family had been merely a footnote—until Trump. More…
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Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford
New 2025 edition
- Vintage
- August 2025
- Paperback & Digital
A life lived larger than life
“If you don’t know about Decca, as everyone called her, just start reading this terrific collection of letters and hang on for the ride.” Michael Dirda, Washington Post
Born into the British aristocracy—one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters—she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry exposé, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic).
“Peter Y. Sussman is a sublime editor of one of the funniest, most enthralling and gloriously honest collections of contemporary letters I have yet read.” Miranda Seymour, London Sunday Times
She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters—now gathered here. Decca’s correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society.
“Captures history’s most charming muckraker.” Vogue