Jac Patrissi

JAC Patrissi has 25 years of experience specializing in creative responses for survivors of destructive relationships and is the author of Should I Stay or Should I Go? A Guide to Knowing if Your Relationship Can—and Should—Be Saved.

Founder and former director of the Vermont Victim Assistance Academy, she facilitates the Growing a New Heart Retreat Series. Patrissi has been on the forefront of statewide and national victim service initiatives for decades. She works with individual women as a coach and advocate, and with small groups of women as a collaborative facilitator.

Additionally, she works with professionals in the local and statewide arena as a consultant addressing criminal justice, military, social service, and grass-roots approaches to anti-violence and victims services work.

Patrissi is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and former recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for her creative writing exploring how the stories women and children tell about themselves help shape their identities and relationships to power.

Under Patrissi’s leadership as director of education at the Barrington Stage Company, The Playwright Mentoring Project won The Coming Up Taller! Award, the nation’s highest honor for after-school arts and humanities programming.

Patrissi is active in building local advocacy services to respond to domestic and sexual violence in the rural area of New England, where she now lives with her family. She also designed and administers Express!, an arts infusion program for pregnant and parenting young women who have dropped out of school and who are pursuing their GEDs. Local poets, actors, artists, and filmmakers serve as teaching artists, supporting the young parents in creating original work.