Susan Viets worked as a journalist in Eastern Europe and the USSR during the collapse of communism. Starting in Budapest with the Guardian (1988 – 1990), she then became the first accredited foreign correspondent in Ukraine, reporting for the Independent (1990 – 1992) and the BBC (1994 – 1996). After a year with the International Red Cross in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1997 – 1998), Susan returned to Canada as a CBC news writer and producer. In 2004 she visited Ukraine and covered the Orange Revolution for the Independent on Sunday.

Her memoir focuses on experiences of everyday people she encountered while reporting overseas. East Germans, emboldened by news of Hungarian and Polish reforms, escaped in a picnic at the Iron Curtain just weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Later, Chernobyl workers summed up Soviet incompetence when they described their evacuation to a purpose built safe town only to find the town was situated on radioactive land. In Picnic at the Iron Curtain, Susan tells adventure stories from a zone of change that stretched from Budapest to Bishkek and Chernobyl to Chechnya.