Suzi Wizowaty lives in Shelburne, Vermont, with her partner of forty-two years, a dog and a cat. She has spent most of her life working with books and ideas--bookselling, working in libraries, creating programs at the state's humanities council, writing and teaching writing, leading book discussions in libraries and prisons. But leading book-discussions in prisons meant getting to know people who were incarcerated. Over the years, their stories piled up, and the facts became clear: mass incarceration, racial imbalance, contracts with private prisons, keeping people in prison for lack of "acceptable" housing, and so much more. It turns out that we Vermonters are party to an obscenely punitive and destructive system that doesn't work.
Eventually Suzi's distress forced her to seek systemic change: she was elected to the state legislature in 2008 and served three terms (2009-2014), focusing on criminal justice reform. Here she appreciated small successes. But significant change to state policy--no matter how ineffective that policy is known to be by lawmakers--is hampered by the public's mistaken assumption that the system works. (And lawmakers rarely lead but follow the desires of their constituents.) Therefore, to focus on education and advocacy, in 2013 Suzi founded the non-profit Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform.
In 2017, Suzi left VCJR. Fortunately, in the meantime, wth the public's growing awareness of mass incarceration and "the new Jim Crow," the national ACLU began to champion criminal justice reform--and Vermont's ACLU chapter has made "Smart Justice" a primary focus. The work is in good hands.
After this ten-year foray into public service and advocacy, Suzi was able to return to other interests--the arts, especially literature and music (especially opera), the natural world around her new home, how to contribute in a different way.
Suzi has written six novels, three of which have found their way into print at least briefly.
To find out more about her adult or children's novels, click on "Suzi's Books" above, or directly on the titles at far right.
