SHEILA SQUILLANTE is a writer and visual artist living in Pittsburgh. 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, as well as four chapbooks of poetry: Dear Sunder,  In This Dream of My Father, Women Who Pawn Their Jewelry and A Woman Traces the Shoreline. Her New and Selected is forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books in 2025.

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 also co-author, along with Sandra L. Faulkner, of the writing craft book, Writing the Personal: Getting Your Stories Onto the Page.

She is currently at work on a documentary memoir project about her mother’s life. You can follow along on Substack.

Her abstract paintings have been featured in numerous literary journals, including Brevity and A-Minor, and is forthcoming as the cover art for Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose. In February, 2023, she was part of her first group exhibit, “Down on Paper,” at Vestige Concept Gallery in Pittsburgh. She is a member of the Confluence Women’s Art Collective in Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her art here.

She directs and teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Chatham University. She is Executive Editor of The Fourth River, Chatham’s journal of nature and place-based writing, and Editor-at-Large for Barrelhouse Magazine.

She lives in the Hazelwood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, with two dogs, a bird, two teenagers, and a philosopher.