Sheila Bender's passion is helping those who want to break their writing out into new forms, revise effectively, generate more writing or facilitate the writing of others. In the last three decades, she has worked with hundreds of people helping them write personal essays, poetry, fiction, and more meaningful writer`s journals, in addition to book-length memoir and how-to books and novels. She specializes in helping people excel in their writing by allowing writing a serious place in their lives. To help, she writes an article every week for Writing It Real members as well as guest blogs for writing sites, magazines and newsletters. After publishing poems and essays in North American literary magazines and anthologies, she published her first book about writing, Writing in a Convertible with the Top Down, in 1991 with co-author Christi Killien, and since then, she continued to produce more books on writing. Currently, Creative Writing Demystified is available in e-book format and Sorrow's Words: Writing Exercises to Heal Grief is available as an ebook as well as in a print edition. Sheila and Christi, now Christi Glover, updated Writing In a Convertible with the Top Down, and made it available again in print and ebook format. In September 2009, her prose memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, was published by Imago Press. After working with many clients who were writing college (and graduate school) applications, she put her experience into the book Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays. When Chronicles Software asked if she'd write content for LifeJournal for Writers, she was eager to take the job on. In 2013, Imago Press published a collection of her poems, Behind Us the Way Grows Wider. Sheila is now working on updating her book on writing personal essays as well as one on journaling. She plans six more books on writing. You can keep abreast of her publications on her website, WritingItReal.com. Sheila has taught at colleges, universities and community centers as well as presented at national writers' programs, conferences and festivals, including the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference, Centrum Writer's Conference, The Whidbey Island Writer's Conference and low-residency MFA program, the University of Dayton`s Erma Bombeck Conference, the San Francisco Jack London Writer`s Conference, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Society of Southwest Authors' Conference, Field's End, and Edmond's Write on the Sound. Each year, since 1997, she has been joined by a renowned faculty for the Writing It Real Writers' Conference. She also joins other colleagues in presenting around the country and abroad. You can read about the workshops and conferences at WritingItReal.com Online, she offers classes and tutorials through WritingItReal.com as well as several other sites. For a list of her coaching, mentoring and one-on-one editing services visit WritingItReal.com. So many of us write more completely, more regularly and with more incentive to explore if we know we have a class, coach or editor (even all three!) waiting to hear from us. Browse Sheila's site to learn about the ways she can help you.
