Sandra . Shwayder Sanchez
Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
Sandra Shwayder Sanchez graduated George Washington High School in 1964. She attended St. John's College in Annapolis for one year where she met her first husband. They traveled in Europe, lived in N.Y. and D.C., and then “back to the land” in West Virginia in the seventies where she designed and oversaw the construction of an energy efficient house. After returning to urban life in D.C. she returned to college at University of Maryland, majoring in Psychology with a minor in the then new women's studies program, and received her divorce decree and her BA degree in 1982. She then moved back to Denver with her two daughters and received her JD from Denver University in 1986.
She joined the National Lawyer's Guild during her first year of law school and was one of several Guild lawyers who represented clients entrapped in a Federal Wildlife Sting operation in the San Luis Valley in 1989 when and where she discovered the interesting historical mystery that inspired The Secret of A Long Journey. In 1989-1990 she represented Russell Means after the first of the Columbus Day Parade Protests and thereafter represented other Native clients in the Juvenile as well the Criminal courts. She also worked with Pen Tate II on federal employment discrimination cases before his death in 1993.
Diagnosed with cancer in 1994, she took a break from law practice and devoted herself to writing novels, novellas, and short stories, literary fiction being another way of becoming a voice for people who are ignored and often oppressed in our society. Ms. Sanchez was remarried in 1994 and she and her husband moved from Denver to Nederland in 2005.
(03/13)
