Susan Forrest

Diagnoses

Personal

Lifestyle

Notable

Traits

Family

American writer, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for her newspaper, Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, in 1988 for her aggressive reporting, winning interviews and breaking stories that no one else could get. Outwardly brazen and fiercely ambitious, she was inwardly lonely and troubled with mental illness diagnosed at the height of her career. She had a history of childhood sexual abuse and heard inner voices that plagued her; she once threw herself in the path of a subway train. Some days her memory failed her and she could not operate simple tasks such as use of the phone or computer, and she withdrew to cry alone. When Forrest died at the home of one of her sisters in Atlanta, on 5 December 2001, the press reported her death as an "accidental overdose." However, the Medical Examiner's Office listed the death as suicide. Her health began to decline in the '90s. She adored animals and lived by herself with a cockatiel in an apartment in Queens for 11 years. She never married or had children.