Paula Sheil

teaches English composition and Shakespeare at San Joaquin Delta College. She advised the Writers’ Guild from 2006-2014 and founded and published Artifact, a lit/art magazine for students, staff and faculty. Before joining the faculty at Delta, she wrote feature stories for The Record for 10 years. Her story “A Killing on Dagget Road,” won second place in California in 2003 for “General Writing” from the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA).

From 1996 to 2001, she co-published Zambomba!, a free quarterly poetry journal with Julia Holzer. Her poetry has been published in small journals across the nation and in the UK. She is a former member and past president of the Stockton Arts Commission and currently is a board member of the Stockton Arts Foundation and the chair of the Marian Jacobs Literary Forum.

In 1997, the Stockton Arts Commission awarded her the STAR award for her long-time arts involvement in theater, dance and literature. In 2013, she received a Distinguished Faculty Member designation at Delta College. In 2014, the San Joaquin Commission on the Status of Women honored her with a Susan B. Anthony Award for her work in the creative arts.

She has called Stockton home since she graduated from the University of the Pacific in 1975 and helped residents see the city’s positive side during its recent financial decline. She published an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Monday, July 23, 2012, and in the International Herald Tribune in Europe on Thursday, July 26.

Listen to Paula on the From Sparks to Light Podcast here.