Susan Polis Schutz

Susan Polis Schutz (born Susan Polis; May 23, 1944) is an American poet and co-founder, with husband Stephen Schutz, of greeting card and book publisher Blue Mountain Arts. . Susan was born to David and June Polis on May 23, 1944 in New York. Susan attended Rider University, where she majored in English and biology and later received an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree. Following her graduation from Rider, she entered a graduate program in physiology, while at the same time teaching elementary school in Harlem and contributing freelance articles to newspapers and magazines. She married Stephen Schutz in 1969 and moved to Colorado to begin life together in the mountains where Susan did freelance writing at home and Stephen researched solar energy in a laboratory. On the weekends, they experimented with printing Susan's poems, paired with Stephen’s paintings, on posters that they silk-screened in their basement. They loved being together so much that it did not take long for them to begin disliking the 9-to-5 weekday separation that resulted from their pursuing different careers. They decided that their being together all the time was more important than anything else. So Stephen left his research position in the physics laboratory, and he and Susan set out in their pickup-truck camper to spend a year traveling across the country and selling their silk-screened posters in towns and cities along the way. Their love of life and each other, which they so warmly communicate, touched people everywhere they went, and in response to incredible public demand for more of the couple's unique and inspiring creations, their first book, Come Into the Mountains, Dear Friend, was published in 1972. Susan and Stephen are the parents of U.S. Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado, born in 1975. They also have a daughter, Jordanna Polis Schutz, born in 1980, and another son, Jorian Polis Schutz born in 1983 Today, she is the author of many best-selling books of poetry illustrated by her husband, Stephen Schutz, including To My Daughter with Love on the Important Things in Life, which has sold over 1.8 million copies. Her poems have been published on over 450,000,000 books and greeting cards worldwide.

Life and career

Schutz was born in Peekskill, NY, and is the daughter of June (née Keller) and David Polis. Her grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Schutz and Blue Mountain Arts came to wider attention with the founding, in 1996, of the bluemountain.com web site. One of the earliest experiments with the electronic greeting card medium, the site was widely adopted by web users. In 1999, the dot-com venture Excite@Home bought bluemountain.com in a deal valued at $780 million. The 1999 price paid for bluemountain.com became an example of what was later seen as the excesses of the dot-com bubble: the website was sold again in 2001, to greeting card company American Greetings, for just $35 million in cash.

Schutz is the executive producer and director of the documentary film Anyone and Everyone. The film featured the coming-out stories of gay sons and daughters and their parents and premiered on KPBS public television in San Diego, California in August 2007 before being scheduled to air on a number of other public television stations in the United States.

External links

• Blue Mountain Arts
• "Anyone and Everyone - About the Film", Anyone and Everyone Website, 2007. Accessed May 3, 2008
• "Biography of Susan Polis Schutz", Anyone and Everyone Website, 2007. Accessed May 3, 2008