The Survivor

A selfie from 2012, when I had a port-a-cath embedded in my chest for chemo. Breast cancer-free since 2012.

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Petit Mort

Petit Mort is … “The only magazine bridging art, fashion, and philosophy through the lense of sex workers.”

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Meetings

There really is nothing quite like having a long lunch meeting at the Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel.

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Let's Work Together

At The Fixer, I help leaders navigate complexity, protect reputation, and make strategic moves with clarity and discretion. Whether it’s crisis management, executive coaching, or shaping communications that matter, my approach is precise, pragmatic, and confidential. Clients range from CEOs and founders to creatives and power players who need real-world solutions — quietly, effectively, and without noise. Based in L.A.

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Books I Read: Hard Core

Linda Williams’ Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” is a rigorously academic work that seeks to trace the history of pornographic movies and explore what their content reveals about their viewers. Dense and filled with academese, the book tackles adult content with all the sexiness of a spatula. While not strictly feminist, Williams’ work privileges feminist porn over not-feminist porn while failing to identify if there is an actual difference between the two beyond an ultimately failed marketing ploy. This book is a buzzkill.

Books I Read

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Reasonable Doubt

Very cool to see my photographs on the walls of this “Hollywood” diner in S3 E5 of Reasonable Doubt on Hulu.

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The Fixer Code

Subscribe to my new newsletter about my strategic communications consultancy, The Fixer: The Fixer Code.

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What I'm Listening to: Automatic's "mq9"

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Mirror Stage

Adult actress Houston in the mirror, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2013. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.

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What We See When We Look

“In my case, a covert narcissist mother and an emotionally unavailable father shaped the story of my life, one in which I ended up going to Porn Valley.” Subscribe and get my newsletter delivered weekly to your inbox.

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An Interview With Me About Writing Fiction

On Substack’s Lit Mag Lounge, there’s a new interview with me on my fiction writing process, “Publishing Diaries: Susannah Breslin”: “I committed myself to an experiment: Could I write about this provocative subject matter—the adult movie business—and what someone who works in the adult movie business would describe as a ‘civilian’s’ encounter with it in a style that could be published in The New Yorker?”

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What I'm Listening to: Boo Boos' "C'mon Baby"

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Tangerine Dream

An adult actress at the AVN Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, 2013. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.

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The Real Scene

An excerpt from my 2009 investigation of the Great Recession’s impact on the adult movie industry, “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?”, a longform piece praised by Longform as “unflinching and devastating.”

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Square Show

A reminder that an adult movie set photograph of mine is part of the “Don’t Be a Square” group show in NYC.

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Masked Mannequin

A pensive mannequin wears a mask in New York City. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.

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Fuck You, Pay Me #26: My Memoir in Taiwan

This is part 26 of Fuck You, Pay Me, an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.

I’m happy to announce that my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, has been translated into Mandarin and published in Taiwan by Akker Publishing. I love the haunting and sci-fi-ish new cover.

Data Baby recounts my 30-year tenure, from early childhood and well into adulthood, as a research subject in a pioneering University of California, Berkeley longitudinal study of personality development that sought to predict who a cohort of over 100 Berkeley kids, including me, would grow up to be.

Actress Emma Roberts’ Belletrist book club selected Data Baby as its December 2023 pick. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it “a fascinating debut memoir” and “gripping stuff.” Kirkus Reviews deemed it “An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.” And The Globe and Mail described it as “a thought-provoking, ridiculously propulsive book.” I also wrote an essay about what it’s like to be a child guinea pig for Slate. Learn more about my book here.

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Who's the Lab Rat Now?

Revisiting “I Spent My Childhood as a Guinea Pig for Science. It Was … Great?”—my personal essay, on Slate.

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Me, by Clayton Cubitt

A triptych of photos of me taken over the years by my buddy, Clayton Cubitt. Hire him to take your photo here.

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Anton Chigurh: An Appreciation

For HILOBROW, I wrote a short personal essay about my affection for No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.

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