Shara McCallum is an American poet. She was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. McCallum is the author of four collections of poems, including Madwoman, which won the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the poetry category. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.

Life and work

McCallum was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to an African Jamaican father, Alastair McCallum, and a Venezuelan mother, Migdalia Bertorelli McCallum. McCallum graduated from the University of Miami, from the University of Maryland with an M.F.A., and from Binghamton University in New York with a PhD. She has taught at the Stonecoast MFA program. McCallum directs the Stadler Center for Poetry and taught creative writing and literature at Bucknell University. McCallum is now a professor of English at Penn State University. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family. McCallum's work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Callaloo, Chelsea, The Iowa Review, Verse, Creative Nonfiction, Seneca Review, and Witness. Her poems can be found in a number of journals worldwide in places like the United States, the UK, Israel and Latin America.

Religion

When she was a child, McCallum was raised practicing Rastafari; however when she migrated to the United States she stopped considering herself a member of any religion. Later in life, she converted to Judaism. McCallum was particularly fond of the idea that Judaism held about being part of a larger community than yourself alone. She found inspiration for her poems in the songs and practices, such as myths and rituals, of her religion. McCallum believes that her form of prayer and mediation is poetry.

Honors and awards

Publications

Full-length poetry collections Nonfiction Anthology publications