We are our stories…

in more ways than we once understood. We now know how they rewire our brains, reveal truth, cast illusion and create leaders. I’ve come of age during this change in awareness and worked the shifting landscape, writing stories for newspapers and magazines, telling them on television and radio, and crafting character ensembles into the larger tapestries of books. I saw the arrival of the word “narrative” into wide public usage, taught classes with it as a discipline, and sat with Presidents who spoke of rising on the wings of a story told to the American people and struggled in office because they lost their “narrative thread.” Like the mystical rug in my older son’s cult favorite, “The Big Lebowski,” stories tie it all together. True in my life, my work, and this little website.

About Ron

Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer-winning journalist, bestselling author, and producer of award-winning documentaries and feature films, and the founder of BongoMedia.

Ron’s latest bestseller, Life, Animated (2014), chronicles his family’s twenty-year journey raising and connecting to their autistic son. The Suskinds are also the subject of an award-winning documentary feature of the same name (2016). Their story has driven activism and research about the compensatory strengths of those with autism and others who are “differently-abled” due to distinctive neurology or sociocultural backgrounds. Ron’s company, The Affinity Project, is leading efforts to build a next generation of augmentative technologies to lift and support these communities.

Ron often appears on network television and has been a contributor for The New York Times Magazine and Esquire. Ron was the Wall Street Journal’s senior national affairs reporter from 1993 until his departure in 2000, and won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. He currently lives in Cambridge, MA, with his wife, Cornelia Kennedy Suskind, and lectures about narrative and justice at Harvard Law School.

Books

Life, Animated

In my most recent book, Life, Animated, I decided to tell a personal story. Here’s how it starts: In 1993, soon after my family and I moved to DC, we realized that something was wrong — our younger son Owen was vanishing on us. Before the move he was chatting away, but now, at two-and-a-half, he wouldn’t speak or look us in the eye. We saw a doctor, and another, who gave us the diagnosis: autism. But one thing that stayed constant was Owen’s love for the Disney animated movies that he would watch over and over again. Soon, we realized that he’d memorized every piece of dialogue in every movie. If we threw him a line, he’d throw us back the next one. My house became an elaborate Disney stage set, and through it I was able to reach my son. In the process, he taught me more than I could have ever imagined. Our story is now an Oscar-nominated documentary directed by the amazingly talented Roger Ross Williams.