Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

Read poems by this poet

Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. She received her BA in English and MA in education from Temple University.

Sheeder Bonanno is the author of Slamming Open the Door (Alice James Books, 2009), a collection of poems about the murder of her daughter in 2003. Sharon Olds called this book “a gift of power, truth, rage and beauty.” The book won the Beatrice Hawley Award and two of its poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize

Sheeder Bonanno received a grant from the Knight Foundation to help establish Musehouse: A Center for Literary Arts in Philadelphia. She also served as a contributing editor to American Poetry Review. She lived in Pennsylvania until her death on June 15, 2017.