Shara Lessley

Biography

Shara Lessley is the author of The Explosive Expert’s Wife (Wisconsin UP, 2018), winner of the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize, Two-Headed Nightingale (New Issues, 2012), and coeditor of The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice (Pleiades, 2018). A former Stegner Fellow, her awards include an NEA Fellowship, “Discovery”/The Nation prize, Mary Wood Fellowship, and Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship, among others. Lessley’s work appears in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She is Editor-at-Large and Associate Nonfiction Editor at West Branch.

See Work

POETRY / Spring/Summer 2023

Sister Catherine’s Art Shelves

By Shara Lessley

Milk-tack, sugar cubes, cotton balls, chalk; 
coffee filters, marshmallows, artificial

POETRY / Spring/Summer 2023

Against Absolution

By Shara Lessley

I went to God but found
I was fog, expected to dissolve

POETRY / Spring/Summer 2023

Confirmation

By Shara Lessley


I chose it,
went willingly,
put in

the time
with the diocese
and my sponsor,

POETRY / Spring/Summer 2023

It’s All in God’s Hands

By Shara Lessley

I wanted to play Gabriel in a tinsel crown,
but was cast as the Little Drummer. I hoped
to carry the crucifix, to ferry the chalice
down the long corridor of St. Aloysius

POETRY / Spring/Summer 2023

Keep the Faith

By Shara Lessley