Susan Sontag was an American writer, filmmaker, teacher, and political activist. She is best known for her essays and novels exploring the intersection of high and low art, and her writing on photography, culture, and media. Her most famous works include 'On Photography' (1977) and 'Illness as Metaphor' (1978). Sontag was a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy and a passionate advocate for human rights. She was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1993 and the Jerusalem Prize in 2001.