Member Profile

Sharon Kirsch is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and journalism whose literary passions range from companion beaver to celebrated hustlers to buried treasure. She was born and raised in Montreal, where she completed a B.A. in English Literature at McGill University. As the recipient of a Commonwealth Scholarship for postgraduate study in English, she lived in York, United Kingdom, before launching a career in Toronto as an in-house book editor and freelance journalist. Her travel stories from these years appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. 

Sharon later moved to Washington, D.C., where she was awarded a place in the Jenny McKean Moore Workshop in Creative Non-Fiction at George Washington University—an opportunity that enticed her into a new and ambitious form of writing. Her debut book, What Species of Creatures, an imaginative telling of first encounters between early settlers to North America and unfamiliar “beasts,” was described by reviewers as “remarkable and unsettling” (Brian Fawcett), “tightly argued and beautifully written” (Anthropozoologica, France), and “revealing and often humorous” (The Beaver magazine). 

In recent years, Sharon’s prose has been published in literary magazines such as Room and subTerrain. The Smallest Objective, a second work of narrative non-fiction, was released by New Star Books, Vancouver, on May 28, 2020, and won a 2021 Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature. This memoir has inspired requests for many interviews, including with CTV Montreal and CBC Radio. The Miramichi Reader called The Smallest Objective "the astute observation of a writer in her prime." Winnipeg Free Press said “As in her earlier book, this new memoir is based on impeccable research, and the prose is equal parts unsentimental, edifying and engaging.”