Steven Sher, a native of Brooklyn, NY, and his wife moved from New York City to Jerusalem in 2012.

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He has taught at many universities since 1977 (e.g., Brooklyn College, Yeshiva University, Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Willamette University, Western Oregon University, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Spalding University, Manhattan College), led many workshops (e.g., The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, Poets House, San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival, Coos Head Writers Workshop, Tumble Words, Catskill Poetry Festival, The Rural Readers Project [poetry in the schools], NEA’s Creativity & Aging Initiative) and lectured widely on writing.

His writing (primarily poetry, short fiction, folktales, satire and features) has appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide and in 17 books including, most recently, Grazing on Stars: Selected Poems (Presa Press, 2012), The House of Washing Hands, about Jewish life in the Pacific Northwest, where Steven lived for 20 years (Pecan Grove Press, 2014), Uncharted Waters (New Feral Press, 2017), Contestable Truths, Incontestable Lies (Dos Madres Press, 2019) and What Comes from the Heart: Poems in the Jewish Tradition (Cyberwit, 2020) .

Themes explored in his poetry include prayer and ritual, finding the holy in the mundane, and our relationships--to each other and to nature.

Some of the publications that have accepted his work include Confrontation, European Judaism, The Georgia Review, The Greenfield Review, The Jerusalem Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Louisville Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Mizmor Anthology, Mudfish, The Nebraska Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Santa Barbara Review, Solo, Talking River Review, Tar River Poetry, Tiferet, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Witness. His work has been featured by Symphony Space (Selected Shorts) and Poetry In Motion, and was an Oregon Book Awards finalist.