Sheila Squillante is a writer and visual artist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her debut essay collection, "All Things Edible, Random and Odd: Essays on Grief, Love and Food," was published by CLASH Books in November, 2023. She is the author of the poetry collections "Mostly Human," winner of the 2020 Wicked Woman Book Prize from Brick House Books, and "Beautiful Nerve" (Tiny Hardcore Books, 2015), as well as four chapbooks of poetry: "Dear Sunder" (dancing girl, 2023), "In This Dream of My Father" (Seven Kitchens, 2014), "Women Who Pawn Their Jewelry" (Finishing Line, 2012), and "A Woman Traces the Shoreline" (dancing girl, 2011). "The Brightest Days: New and Selected Poems" is forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books in 2025. She is co-author, along with Sandra L. Faulkner, of the writing craft book, "Writing the Personal: Getting Your Stories Onto the Page" (Sense Publishers, 2015) and is currently working on a memoir about her coming of age as a feminist ands a documentary prose project about her mother's life.
She was the assistant director of the MFA program at Penn State where she also taught writing for twelve years. In 2013 she joined the MFA faculty at Chatham University in Pittsburg where she now serves as program director and associate professor. For more than a decade she was the facilitator of the Summer Community of Writers, a ten-day residency that brought together nationally renowned writers, MFA students and community members for intensive study at Eden Hall, Chatham's beautiful organic farm campus. She is executive editor of The Fourth River, Chatham's journal of nature and place-based writing. Other editorial work included PANK, where she was reviews editor and blog editor, and Barrelhouse Magazine, where she served as online editor responsible for blog columns and special issues, including two e-books tributes to the work of Prince and David Bowie. She currently serves as an editor-at-large.
In addition to her work as a writer, Squillante is a visual artist. Her abstract paintings have been featured in Brevity and A-Minor Magazine and as cover art for Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose. She is a member of the Confluence Women's Art Collective in Pittsburgh, where she lives with a messy but sincere garden, two dogs, a bird, two teenagers and a philosopher.
Please join us in the Cheever Room, located in Finn House, on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 4:30 p.m.