Sheryl St. Germain

Color photograph of writer Sheryl St. Germain with their back to a canal

Sheryl St. Germain’s work includes the poetry collections Let It Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House Press, 2007) and The Small Door of Your Death (Autumn House Press, 2018) and the nonfiction titles Navigating Disaster: Sixteen Essays of Love and a Poem of Despair (Louisiana Literature Press, 2012) and 50 Miles (Etruscan Press, 2020). She has also published Je Suis Cadien (Cross-Cultural Communications, 1994), a chapbook of translations of work by the Cajun poet Jean Arceneaux. She coedited Between Song and Story: Essays from the Twenty-first Century (Autumn House Press, 2011) with Margaret Whitford, and Words without Walls: Writers on Addiction, Violence, and Incarceration (Trinity University Press, 2015) with Sarah Shotland.

A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, St. Germain has taught creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Knox College, Iowa State University, and Chatham University, where she directed the MFA in creative writing program for 10 years. Her work has received several awards, including two NEA Fellowships, an NEH Fellowship, a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, a Ki Davis Award from Aspen Words, and a William Faulkner Award for personal essay. In 2018, she received the Louisiana Writer Award from the Louisiana Center for the Book. 

She resides in Savannah, Georgia, where she continues to write and make fiber art as a member of the Kobo Gallery artist collective.