Sheila O’Connor is the author of four novels: Tokens of Grace, Where No Gods Came, Sparrow Road, and Keeping Safe the Stars.  Awards for her novels include the Michigan Prize for Literary Fiction, Minnesota Book Award, International Reading Award, and Midwest Booksellers Award among others.   Her books have been included in Best Books of the Year by Booklist, VOYA, Book Page, Bank Street, Chicago Public Library, and Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers.  

A multi-genre writer, her work has been anthologized in Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers, The Next Parish Over, Mothers and Daughters, and Best of Helicon Nine. Her short stories, poems, and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies including Bellingham Review, Minnesota Monthly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Baltimore Review, Great River Review, Blue Earth Review, and others. Her short story, "Just Say the Word," won the Tamarack Award for Fiction. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Sheila O'Connor has been awarded Bush Fellowships (2003, 2009),  Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships (2004, 2015),  and a Loft McKnight Fellowship.  She has also been the recipient of artist residencies from The Studios of Key West, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tyrone Guthrie Center, and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. She is an Associate Professor in the MFA program at Hamline University where she serves as Fiction Editor for Water~Stone Review.