Having spent more than two decades writing about the “real world” as an award-winning journalist, Susan Zeidler now takes her readers to imaginative, magical places in her first novel The Practice Room.

While The Practice Room may seem a huge departure for Susan – who has covered events ranging from major court cases to oil spills to movie premieres to the Academy Awards – it is really just an extension of her life’s journey. Throughout her career, she has always had a foot in both the business and creative worlds. Between writing about some of the world’s most momentous events as a news reporter, she also continued to hone her craft as a musician and a writer of fiction.

Susan grew up in Baldwin, Long Island, where she developed an early love for the arts: reading, writing and music. As a child, she often wrote plays with her cousin and then acted and sang in them. She also studied piano and later went on to delve deeply into jazz. As a musician, Susan has performed around the world in cities as varied as Oslo, Manhattan, and Los Angeles. She has additionally written two screenplays, “Tailspin” and “Hit Single.”

In her novel The Practice Room, Susan melds her many experiences as both a musician and a chronicler of current events in an exciting fantasy that reflects an otherworldly musical voyage of a young teen girl against the background of modern historical milestones.

Susan holds a B.A. from State University of New York at Albany and an M.S. from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She resides with her husband, daughter, and cat Rosie in Southern California.

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