Bio
Susan Ritz grew up in Minnesota, but she left home to become a wandering scholar; she lived, studied, and worked as a social worker in Kenya, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia in the 1970s. She worked as a human rights lobbyist in Washington, DC, during the Carter Administration before moving to Dachau, Germany, the setting for her memoir in progress, On the Edge of Dachau. For the past forty years, she has lived with her husband and three children in Montpelier, Vermont, where she has worked as a fundraiser, events coordinator, and philanthropic advisor for a wide range of nonprofit organizations, especially those promoting economic equality for women. Writing, however, has always been her passion, and after receiving an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College, she began writing for local publications, teaching creative writing to adults and high school students, and working on her first novel, A Dream to Die For, which was published on July 16, 2019.
Susan is currently writing a series of essays for a book about the intersection of her personal history and events that have shaped the world around her over the past seventy years. Her experience living overseas provides the background for an examination of patriotism and what it means to love a flawed and now faltering nation. You can read the first essay here, and the second, which was published in Green Mountains Review in 2020, can be read here.
