Sheryl St. Germain

A native of New Orleans, Sheryl St. Germain has taught creative writing at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Knox College and Iowa State University. She currently directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, where she also teaches poetry and creative nonfiction.

Her work has received several awards, including two NEA Fellowships, an NEH Fellowship, the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, the Ki Davis Award from the Aspen Writers Foundation, and the William Faulkner Award for the personal essay.

Her poetry books include Going Home, The Mask of Medusa, Making Bread at Midnight, How Heavy the Breath of God, The Journals of Scheherazade and Let it Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems. She has also published a book of translations of the Cajun poet Jean Arceneaux, Je Suis Cadien.

Her nonfiction books include Swamp Songs: the Making of an Unruly Woman, a memoir about growing up in Louisiana, and most recently, Navigating Disaster: Sixteen Essays of Love and a Poem of Despair, published in September 2012.

She is the co-editor of Between Song and Story: Essays for the 21st Century.