Susan 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. A University of Wisconsin?Madison graduate, Carpenter was working as a legal secretary in San Francisco, California in 1995 when she 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 1998, Carpenter took a job as editor of the niche culture magazine UHF and moved to Los Angeles, where, under the alias "Paige Jarrett", she founded a new pirate station, "KBLT", also named after the sandwich, in the hipster Los Angeles community of Silver Lake.