Sheila Black
Sheila Black is an American poet and children's writer. Black is the author of five poetry collections. She was a U.S. co-winner of the Frost-Pellicer Frontera Prize in 2000 and received a Witter Bynner Fellowship in 2012.
Also recorded as Sheila Fiona Black · Jennifer Greenway
Sheila Black
Larry D. Moore · CC BY 4.0
- Name
- Sheila Black
- Occupation
- Poet, children's writer
- Education
- Barnard College (BA); University of Montana (MFA)
- Born
- 1961 · Minnesota.
- Nationality
- United States
- Languages
- English
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Sheila Black is an American poet and children's writer. Black is the author of five poetry collections. She was a U.S. co-winner of the Frost-Pellicer Frontera Prize in 2000 and received a Witter Bynner Fellowship in 2012.
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wikidata · Q7493009 · wikipedia · Sheila Black
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Sheila Black • Occupation — Poet, children's writer • Education — Barnard College (BA); University of Montana (MFA) • Notable Works — Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
Life and career
Life and career
Black earned a BA from Barnard College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana. Black taught part-time at New Mexico State University and worked as development director for the Colonias Development Council. Black has written about having X-linked hypophosphatemia (XLH), a genetic condition historically referred to as vitamin-D-resistant rickets. In essays and interviews, she has discussed disability, embodiment, and disability poetics as subjects in her writing. Black co-edited Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability with Jennifer Bartlett and Michael Northen and co-founded Zoeglossia, a nonprofit organization for poets with disabilities.
Collaborative works
Collaborative works
• Continental Drift, with Michele Marcoux. Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh, 2010.
Anthology
Anthology
• Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, co-edited with Jennifer Bartlett and Michael Northen. Cinco Puntos Press, 2011.
Children's books
• Patrick the Pup. Andrews and McMeel/Ariel Books, 1996. • Will the Real Ms. X Please Report to the Principal!. Troll, 1998. • Me and Maya, the Super Brain. McGraw-Hill School Division, 2000. • Lassie. Puffin Books, 1994.
reading at Sunday Kind of Love, Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C.
Slowking4
Themes and reception
Black's poetry has been discussed in relation to confessional writing. Her essay "Waiting to Be Dangerous: Disability and Confessionalism" appears in Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Her poem "What You Mourn", from House of Bone, addresses bodily difference, medical intervention, and disability. In a 2019 interview with Poetry International Online, Black described disability poetics as a poetics of "negative capability" and "a kind of praise of vulnerability". She said that she began to write with greater authenticity after she "came out" as a person with a disability around the age of forty. A review of House of Bone in Wordgathering said Black's poems are "rooted in desire, emotion, and the sensual world". The review described the collection as structured so that disability appears in its middle section rather than defining the whole book, making disability one part of the collection's larger treatment of embodiment, language, and experience. In Ploughshares, Robert Boswell called House of Bone "a complex and surprising collection, a very mature first book of poetry".
Poetry collections
Poetry collections
• House of Bone. CustomWords, 2007. • Love/Iraq. WordTech Communications, 2009. • Wen Kroy. Dream Horse Press, 2013. • Iron, Ardent. Educe Press, 2017. • Radium Dream. Salmon Poetry, 2022.
Documents and archives
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Sheila Black”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q7493009: Sheila Black
General reference · Wikidata
Citations
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General reference
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 18 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
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