Susan Gardner is a native Southern Californian, born in 1958. She attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and returned to California to work for the Riverside Press-Enterprise Company as editor and publisher of one of its large community weekly newspapers during the 1980’s. After taking a decade and a half off to raise a family, she returned to politics and writing via Daily Kos several years ago.

She’s also been a freelance editor and writer, general manager of a special education curriculum company and the exhausted mother of four children. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.