Sue Carpenter (Writer and pirate radio personality)

Sue Carpenter is a writer and media personality known for operating two illegal pirate radio stations and writing about unconventional adventures she has undertaken in order to experience them firsthand.

While working as a legal secretary in San Francisco, California in the mid-1990s,  Carpenter began pseudonymously running an illegal all-music pirate radio station, which she named KPBJ after the sandwich. The station operated for three and a half years before the FCC shut it down. During those years, KPBJ grew from interviewing relatively unknown guests to hosting live performances by such bands as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction.

In the late 1990s, Carpenter took a job as editor of niche culture magazine UHF and moved to Los Angeles, where she founded a new pirate station, KBLT, also named after the sandwich, in the hipster Los Angeles community of Silver Lake. Among the noted performers to perform at KBLT was Mazzy Star, who played a benefit to help pay her legal fees, and the station featured bootleg world premieres of songs by Beck, Madonna, and Jesus and Mary Chain.

Carpenter is currently a feature writer for The Los Angeles Times and a senior contributor to Jane magazine. Her writing has also appeared in George, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan. She has written about working as a Hooters girl, posing for Playboy magazine, joining the Army, working on a chain gang, competing in a Hawaiian Tropic tanning contest, and trying out for the L.A. Lakers basketball team, in addition to other endeavors. She also provides commentary about pirate radio happenings.