04/24/2026
Congratulations to Sharona Muir on her retirement!
Sharona describes her time at BGSU as fortunate and experimental: “I feel very lucky to have taught the writing of poetry (and occasionally prose) to young people for thirty-three years.”
One favorite memory at BGSU is in 1995 when she met her husband at the Friends of Jerome Library Authors & Artists Reception. Her least expected of her “highlights” was a good review in O, The Oprah magazine. This put her first novel amongst the “snazziest handbags and cosmetics in the American lifestyle.” Sharona's most recent achievement is that her last book, “Animal Truth,” won the Publishing Lab Prize for experimental fiction from the University of New Orleans Press.
Her next steps after retirement are to study Japanese and to sleep as long as she likes in the morning.
Sharona shares from Jewish tradition: "Rabbi Avital Hochstein ... reminds us that the ark and its furnishings created a home, among ordinary people, for an eternal, infinite, abstract being. Isn’t that what writers do – use our vision and our craft to house what lies beyond understanding? You don’t have to believe in God, or in any religion, to understand that in this sense, your writing is an ark. Best of luck to you all."
