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, Iowa State University, and Chatham University where she directed the MFA Creative Writing program for 14 years. 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. In 2018 she received the Louisiana Writer Award from the Louisiana Center for the Book in the State Library of Louisiana. St. Germain has published numerous books, including the poetry collections Let it Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems (2007) and The Small Door of Your Death (2018), and the nonfiction titles Navigating Disaster: Sixteen Essays of Love and a Poem of Despair (2012) and 50 Miles (2020). Additionally, she published a chapbook of translations of the Cajun poet Jean Arceneaux, Je Suis Cadien (1994) and co-edited, with Margaret Whitford, Between Song and Story: Essays for the Twenty-First Century (2011), and with Sarah Shotland, Words Without Walls: Writers on Addiction, Violence and Incarceration (2015). She resides in Savannah, Georgia where she continues to write and make fiber art. She is a member of the Kobo Gallery artist collective in Savannah.