Sue Repko
writer, editor, gun violence prevention advocate
About
Sue Repko is a freelance writer, editor, urban planner, and gun violence prevention advocate. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, a master’s in city and regional planning from Rutgers University, and a B.A. in psychology from Princeton University. Her essays have been named notable three times in The Best American Essays and won a Maine Literary Award for short nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Brevity Blog, The Southeast Review, Hazlitt, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Princeton Alumni Weekly and elsewhere. She is represented by Gail Hochman of Brandt & Hochman. Her memoir, American Standoff: One Daughter’s Search for Safety in an Armed and Angry Nation, about her relationship with her gunsmith father and an unintentional shooting that resulted in the death of a neighbor, is currently out on submission.
From 2018-2021 Sue was the Be SMART Lead for the state of Maine. She is an Everytown Survivor Fellow and a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. In these capacities, she testified before the Maine legislature, published op-eds and letters to the editor, trained other volunteers, and shared a message about the safe storage of firearms with parents, pediatricians, medical students, law enforcement, and the general public. She has also been trained as a Racial Justice Peer Coach for Moms Demand Action. Now living in New Jersey, Sue was the keynote speaker for the New Jersey Chapter of Moms Demand Action’s 2022 Wear Orange weekend and is regularly invited to speak about her experience, putting it into the context of current conversations about the role of guns in American culture.
Latest Posts
Book news!
It's been awhile since I've posted. In late December 2021 I heard back from a literary agent who was interested in my manuscript. We had a few emails back and forth and then a phone conversation about how to make the work stronger. So the first quarter of 2022 had me...
Joan Didion has died and I am sad.
Of all the remembrances about Didion that are flooding my social media feed and news sites in the past 24 hours, what has stuck with me the most was the acknowledgment by Francine Prose in a piece at WHYY, Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate, that Didion’s anxiety is always on the page, that even for all her intelligence and sharp observations and commentary, she was an anxious person and this quality infused her work.
“Pandemic Thoughts, Racing” published in The Keeping Room
I am so grateful to The Keeping Room for publishing my essay, "Pandemic Thoughts, Racing." I've been so immersed in finishing my memoir that I have not had an essay published in a while. Feels good to have this out in the world -- something unrelated to my memoir....