Sue Repko

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.