Sheila Black comes to AWP from San Antonio, Texas, where since 2012 she served as Executive Director of Gemini Ink, San Antonio's independent literary arts center. Her extensive career in development includes serving as a Development Officer with the New Mexico State University Foundation, and 7 years as the Development Director for the Colonias Development Council, a non-profit that focuses on community organizing in unincorporated townships or colonias along the US-Mexico Border.

She received her BA in French literature from Barnard College in 1983, and both an MA in English literature and an MFA in creative writing/poetry from the University of Montana.

From 1983-1991, she worked as a children's book editor in New York City, and during this time authored some 40 books for children and young adults. 

Black taught for many years in the English Department at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and was Visiting Professor of poetry in their MFA program from 2007-2009. She is the author of four poetry collections—House of Bone (CW Press, 2007), Love, Iraq (CW Press, 2009), Wen Kroy (Dream Horse Press, 2014) and Iron, Ardent (Educe Press, 2017). She has been a featured poet at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival (2014) and Poetry at Roundtop Festival (2017).

Born with XLH, a rare genetic bone disorder, Black has been active in disability communities. She has written essays about her disability experience for Prime Number, Tikkun, The New York Times, and Wordgathering. 

She co-edited with Jennifer Bartlett and Michael Northen Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011), named a 2012 Notable Book for Adults by the American Library Association (ALA). She recently co-edited with Annabelle Hayse and Michael Northen The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked: The Fiction of Disability (Cinco Puntos Press, 2017), which received a Barbara Jordan Media Award from the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities, and is a finalist for the 2018 Firecracker Award in fiction from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP).

 In 2012, Black received a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, for which she was selected by Philip Levine. 

She looks forward to working with the AWP staff to ensure the strength and sustainability of AWP’s support for the writers, writing programs, and writing communities that make up AWP.

About AWP

AWP provides support, advocacy, resources and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 550 college and university creative writing programs, and 150 writers’ conferences and centers. Our mission is to foster literary achievement, advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and serve the makers, teachers, students and readers of contemporary writing.