Sheryl Bize-Boutte

Award winning author and Pushcart Prize nominee, Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte is an internationally published multidisciplinary writer. Her autobiographical and fictional short story collections, along with her lyrical and stunning poetry, have a established her as a well-known Oakland Bay Area writer and poet whose writing artfully succeeds in getting across the deeper meanings of race, colorism and economics.  Her stories and poetry have been variuosly described as "rich and vivid in imagery," and "incredible." Her debut novel, Betrayal on the Bayou (2020) has been reviewed as "A tour de force...a stunning debut," and " A novel that hums with lyrical cadence...yet bites with its dramatic rendering of racial cruelty and the subjugation of women."  Its 2024 follow-on,"Back to the Bayou: The Tassin Valley Saga Continues," is already garnering high praise as a page turner, with readers asking for book #3 and more. The poetry collection she authored with her daughter Dr. Angela M. Boutte, No Poetry No Peace™ (2020), is the namesake of the bi-annual No Poetry No Peace™ poetry event at the famed Mechanics Insititute Library in San Francisco.  The first chapter of her in progress novel, The Burden Keeper, was the 2021 fiction category winner in the San Francisco Writers Conference writing contest anthology.  An inagural Oakland poet laureate runner-up, Sheryl is also a popular literary reader, presenter, storyteller, literary event curator, emcee and teacher.