One of the leading intellectual voices of the late 20th Century has been silenced today as author/activist Susan Sontag died at the age of 71. Sontag had been suffering from leukemia before passing away Tuesday morning at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

Sontag was best known for her essay writing although she did have a best selling historical novel in 2000 called 'The Volcano Lover' and won the National Book Award for her another historical novel 'In America.'

Sontag was also very active in political causes. When Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of author Salmon Rushdie in the mid-80s for writing 'The Satanic Verses,' Sontag was at the forefront of the protests within the literary community.

She was also very active in trying to aid victims of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and tried to raise international awareness of the situation in those countries.

Some of her best known essays included 'Notes on Camp,' which dealt with campiness in popular culture and 'Illness as Metaphor.'

'I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate,' Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist, once said. 'She is unique.'