I spent my life as a poet and lyric essayist. When I retired from teaching and directing an MFA program in creative writing in 2019, I bought a sewing machine and learned how to quilt. My last two books had been about my son’s overdose death, and I felt drained from all the words that went into those books. I wanted to do something more physical, something with my hands, something that was tactile, like the crocheting I had always done in my spare time. I felt I had reached an endpoint with crochet, though, and wanted something new that I felt could grow more widely and deeply. I quickly moved from traditional quilting to experimenting with improvisational piecing and surface design, which I love, and which feels like the jazz I love embedded into cloth.
This website showcases both my long life in writing and my newer work in fiber art. Below is my writing bio. You’ll find my artist statement on a separate page. If you are interested in purchasing my work either in person or online, go to Kobo Gallery
A native of New Orleans, Sheryl has taught at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Knox College, Iowa State University and Chatham University, where she served as Director of the MFA in Creative Writing for 14 years. She is the co-founder and former director of the Words Without Walls Program. 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.
She was named Louisiana Writer of the Year in November 2018.
Sheryl’s poetry books include The Small Door of Your Death, and Let it Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House Press), Making Bread at Midnight, (Slough Press), and How Heavy the Breath of God and The Journals of Scheherazade (University of North Texas Press). She has published three chapbooks: Going Home (Perivale), The Mask of Medusa (Cross Cultural Communications), (chapbooks) and a chapbook of translations of the Cajun poet Jean Arceneaux, Je Suis Cadien (Cross Cultural Communications).
She has published three memoirs, Fifty Miles (Etruscan Press), Swamp Songs: the Making of an Unruly Woman (University of Utah Press), Navigating Disaster: Sixteen Essays of Love and a Poem of Despair (Louisiana Literature Press).
She co-edited, with Margaret Whitford, Between Song and Story: Essays for the 21st Century (Autumn House Press). With Sarah Shotland she co-edited Words Without Walls: Writers on Addiction, Violence and Incarceration, (Trinity University Press).