Sharon Olson's Biography

Sharon Olson has recently moved to Lawrenceville, New Jersey (after living three and a half years in Guilford, Connecticut). She retired in 2007 from the Palo Alto (California) City Library where she had been a reference librarian and cataloger since 1978. She earned a B.A. in Art History from Stanford and attended its campus in Florence, Italy, in 1967. She also has an M.L.S. from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. Her chapbook Clouds Brushed in Later won the Abby Niebauer Memorial Chapbook award in 1987, and her full-length book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her poems have appeared in Kalliope, The Seattle Review, Santa Clara Review, DMQ Review, American Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, Arroyo Literary Review, Cider Press Review and other journals. She can be heard reading her poems online at KQED's The Writers' Block.