Announcing the Winner of the 2023 Gerald Cable Book Award
Sheila Dietz
Sheila Dietz of Branford, Connecticut is the winner of the 2023 Gerald Cable Book Award for her collection, The Berry and the Bee.
Sheila Dietz (she has also published as Sheila Bonenberger) grew up in the Netherlands, attended a Dutch school and began conceiving of the world in literary terms at an early age. Her family moved every 2-3 years, and she experienced all the chaos and dislocation that life entailed. The world she created by writing became her one true and safe home. She was a Bread Loaf Scholar in 1989. Her work began to be recognized and rewarded. In 1994, she received a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Individual Artist Grant, the year she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. As she grew as an artist, she decided to pursue an MFA which she received from Vermont College. Recently she attended the Poetry Manuscript workshop with David Wojahn at the Vermont College Postgraduate Writers Conference (8/22).
During these years she gave readings and led creative writing workshops at libraries, schools and prisons. She taught at Southern Connecticut State University (where she would eventually receive an MLS) as an Assistant Professor of English (temporary, full-time appointment) 1989-1990; as an Adjunct Lecturer, she taught classes in composition, 1988-1989. She also worked at Albertus Magnus College (where she received her BA) – New Haven, CT as an Adjunct Lecturer in the English Department from 1988-1989.
Sheila’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Wrath-Bearing Tree and numerous other publications. (Recently, one of her poems appeared in the 2023 One Page Poem Anthology and sections of another were incorporated into "Sacred Land: Songs and Poems of Resilience from Ukraine," part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, CT, June 2023). In addition to publications, she has read her poems on Home Page Radio WPKN Community Radio. Her chapbook “The Moon’s Eye” has been accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press.
Sheila worked as a librarian at the New Haven Free Public Library for 17 years, retiring as Head of Reference Services in 2013.
She is also the co-founder of the Salt and Pepper Gospel Singers (from New Haven, CT), which is reflected in her work which is often, though not always, spiritual in nature.
Sheila Dietz of Branford, Connecticut