Sheila Bender

Sheila Bender (born 1948) is an American poet and essayist, best known for her popular books on writing instruction. She hosts a show on KPTZ in Port Townsend, Washington. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, and literary magazines around North America, including The Bellingham Review, Northwest Passage, Poetry Northwest, The Seattle Times, and the Women's Studies Quarterly. She lives and works in Port Townsend.

Education Bender graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in English and earned an MAT in Secondary Education from Keane College and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington.

Works Bender's many books on writing include Creative Writing DeMystified, Writing and Publishing Personal Essays, Writing in a New Convertible with the Top Down, Keeping a Journal You Love, A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery, The Writer's Journal: Forty Writer's and Their Journals, and Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays. Her memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, chronicles how reading and writing poetry helped her cope after the loss of her 25-year-old son and find a way to live with love in the spirit of her son. Her newest collection of poems, entitled Behind Us the Way Grows Wider, appeared in 2012.

She has devoted most of her career to the teaching of writing and the improvement of writing instruction. In addition to her dozen books on writing, she has written instructional and feature articles for Writer's Digest magazine and The Writer magazine. She founded WritingItReal.com, where she provides an online instructional magazine for those who write from personal experience and offers individual as well as online group writing instruction.

Bender provided the prompts to the innovative journaling software LifeJournal with Chronicles Software, which helps writers not only generate interesting journal content, but organize and retrieve their ideas. She is also a regular instructor, panelist, and presenter at writing and educational conferences, Writing in a New Convertible with the Top Down: A Unique Guide for Writers (with Christi Killien), 1992. The Writer's Journal: 40 Contemporary Writer's and Their Journals, 1997. Writing Personal Poetry: Creating Poems from Your Life Experiences, 1999. A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery, 2000. Keeping a Journal You Love, 2001. Writing Personal Essays: How to Shape Your Life Experiences for the Page, 2002. Writing and Publishing Personal Essays, 2005. Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays, 2008. Creative Writing DeMystified, 2010

Memoir A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief 2009.

Poetry Since Then: Poems and Short Prose, 2022. Behind Us the Way Grows Wider, 2013 Sustenance: New and Selected Poems, 1999. Love from the Coastal Route: Poems, 1991. Near the Light, 1983.

Anthologies Boomer Girls, 1999 We Used to Be Wives, 2002 Washington State Poets Association Anthology, 2004 Women Writing on Family, 2011 Women on Poetry, 2012

Software LifeJournal for Writers with Chronicles Software