Sharon English’s books include the novel Night in the World (May 2022), and two collections of short stories, Uncomfortably Numb and Zero Gravity. Zero Gravity was long-listed for the Giller Prize, short-listed for the ReLit Award, and was a Globe & Mail Best 100 title of the year. A translation into Serbian was published in 2020. Night in the World has been described as “a splendid and searing novel, pressed up against the tremors of our times.” It was a 49th Shelf Book of the Year.

A long-time writing teacher, mentor and editor, Sharon is Assistant Professor in the Writing & Rhetoric program at the University of Toronto. She also teaches creative writing courses and workshops for other institutions, organizations, and independently.  

Sharon’s stories, essays and interviews have also appeared in journals such as Best Canadian Stories, Canadian Notes & Queries (CNQ), Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, and Dark Mountain in Britain. She was guest co-editor of the Winter 2020 special issue of CNQ, “Writing in an Age of Unravelling,” which featured writing that addresses ecological crisis. Sharon has been dedicated to re-imagining our relationship to home in the context of ecological and social crisis, and to pursuing writing and storytelling that aligns with the natural world.

Originally from London, ON, Sharon lives most of the year in rural Nova Scotia on the Shubenacadie River.