Sharon Skinner

 Website: Sharonskinner.com
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Sharon Skinner is an award-winning poet who received her B.A. in English from Ottawa University and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Prescott College.

From 1996 to 2004 she served as the Executive Editor of Anthology magazine, a small press literary magazine published in Mesa, Arizona. Her work has appeared in a number of periodicals including Green's Magazine, New Moon Rising, Sage Woman, El Sol, The Mesa Legend, Mosaic Minds and The Barnes and Noble Metaverse Poetry Anthology.

In addition to writing poetry, Sharon has been a featured reader at many events throughout the state, including the opening of the M.A.D. Linguist in Prescott, AZ and the 2002 Slab City Slam at Arcosanti. She has been the Master of Ceremonies (in 2001) and a judge (2001 through 2004) for the Mesa Public Library's annual Battle of the Bards poetry contest and is the founder and host of Radiant Readings, an internet radio show that features the work of classic and contemporary authors and information about their lives.

Sharon moved to Arizona in 1981 after a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy where she learned electronics and traveled halfway around the world on the U.S.S. Jason, a repair ship and the first Naval vessel to take a contingency of women on a full six-month WestPac cruise. During her tour, she was the first enlisted female to stand shore patrol in the Philippines and, as the Saturday morning FM Rock Jock, served as the first female DJ to be heard on the Armed Forces Radio Station airwaves issuing from the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

About living in Arizona she says, “When I first came to the desert, I thought I had come to the ends of the earth. But after a short time, I realized just how much life teems and thrives in this harsh environment, and that is something I can certainly relate to.”