Derek Sheffield

Poet and naturalist Derek Sheffield was born in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Not For Luck (Michigan State University Press, 2021), winner of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin (Orchises Press, 2013), runner-up for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. He is coeditor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry (Mountaineers Books, 2023) and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (Trinity University Press, 2020). His honors include the James Hearst Poetry Prize, special mention in the 2016 Pushcart Prize Anthology, and fellowships from Artist Trust, the Spring Creek Project, Allied Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

Sheffield earned an MFA from the University of Washington. He is a professor of English at Wenatchee Valley College and also teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Western Colorado University. He lives near Leavenworth, Washington, and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org.