About

Cheryl J. Fish, Ph.D., grew up in Flushing, NY. She is a poet, fiction writer and environmental justice scholar. Her recent books of poetry include Crater & Tower, on trauma and ecology after the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption and the terrorist attack of 9/11/01, and The Sauna is Full of Maids, poems and photographs celebrating Finnish sauna culture, the natural world, and friendships.

Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Poetics-for-the-More-than-Human-World, New American Writing, Newtown Literary, Terrain.org, Reed, and Hanging Loose. Her short fiction has been published in Iron Horse Literary Review, CheapPop, Spank the Carp, and Liar’s League.

Off the Yoga Mat, her debut novel about three characters turning 40 as the year 2000 (Y2K) approaches, will be published in 2022 by Livingston Press.

Fish's essays on films and photography by Sami artists challenging mining and extraction have appeared in the books Arctic Cinemas; Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment; and Critical Norths: Space, Nature, Theory. She is the author of two books and essays on African-American travel writing, June Jordan's environmental justice poetics, and women's travel literature.

Fish has been a Fulbright professor in Finland and visiting professor at Mt. Holyoke College; she teaches at BMCC/City University of New York, and is a docent lecturer in the Dept. of Cultures at University of Helsinki.

Fulbrighter Snapshot Profile – Interview with Fulbrighter on teaching and researching in Finland: “I am drawn to Finland's mostly unspoiled beauty of nature, the small human population, amazing lakes, forests and walking paths, and the sauna culture to relax, sitting (often naked) next to those of different sizes, ages, backgrounds, and shapes. “

Cheryl has been named Co-editor of the “Storying Ecocenes” creative writing section of the journal Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities.

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Teaching Experience

  • Professor, English, Coordinator of Intensive Writing, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.

  • Visiting Professor, Women's Studies Certificate Program, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

  • Docent, North American Studies, Dept. of Cultures, University of Helsinki, Finland

  • Fulbright Lecturer, University of Tampere, Finland

  • Visiting Professor, American Studies, Mount Holyoke College

Select Lectures, Readings, Honors

  • “Journeys and Warnings: Nancy Prince’s Resistant Truth-Telling in New England, Russia, and Jamaica, forthcoming in Activism in the Name of God: Religion and Black Feminist Public Intellectuals from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, Ed. Jami Carlacio, University of Mississippi Press, 2022.

  • Guest blog post on ARTIVISM and Ecological RESPONSE to extractivism

  • BMCC News Sabbatical Accomplishments, Oct. 2019

  • Co-Coordinator, Speaker and Moderator, “The Arts for Justice: Indigenous Coalition Building and Artistic Practices,” Seminar, University of Helsinki, April 15, 2019.

  • Guest Lecturer, Environmental Humanities Series, University of Helsinki, Oct. 16, 2018.

  • Writer-in Residence, Art Centre Kulttuurikauppila, Ii, Finland, Sept. 2018.

  • Essay,“Liselotte Wajstedt’s Kiruna: Space Road (Kiruna— Rymdvägen): Experimental Ecocinema as Elegiac Memoir in ‘Extractivist’ Sápmi," in Journal of Scandinavia Cinema, Vol. 8 No. 2, June 2018, p 111-122.

  • Invited Panelist, remarks about Sami identity and film following the New York premiere of “Sami Blood,” feature film at Scandinavia House, April 24, 2017.

  • Short story, "Strike-Slip Fault," published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Issue 19.4, 2017.

  • 2018: Poems in Hanging Loose and New American Writing. 

  • SEED BOX grant to lecture and present on Sami film at Linköping University,  Sweden, April, 2017.  

  • Chancellor's Fellowship, City University of New York, 2016-17.

  • My story, "Never Buy Dope in Washington Square" from the dot-matrix printed experimental journal of the 1980s Between C&D,  featured in window exhibit at 80 WSE Gallery, NYU, Dec 4, 2014-Feb. 14, 2015.

  • Calvin B. Grimes Scholar-in-Residence, New York University Faculty Resource Network. June, 2015. Research for a paper on Sami Film as response mining/resource extraction in the Arctic North.Writers Read/Hilltowns – Featured Reader Cheryl J. Fish, October 4, 2020

  • Short story "Hovering" chosen for Liars' League NYC reading at KGB Bar. Theme: Cash and Credit

  • Finalist in L Magazine's  search for pocket fiction for excerpt from novel manuscript OFF THE YOGA MAT

  • Essay, "The Lost One": An Exhibit and film by Sami filmmaker Liselotte Wadstedt,published by  Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden, exhibit on Sami artists.

  • Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change at University of Alabama, on June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller's Harlem Redesign Project

  • Lectured on environmental justice activism among young adults at the Green Feminism Conference at SUNY New Paltz

  • Residencies: Wellspring House, Ragdale, Renaissance House.

  • Finalist, Fiction, Artsmith residency, Orcas Island Washington

  • Writer-in-Residence, Springcreek Project, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

  • Winner, Florence Howe Award for Best Feminist Essay from the Women's Caucus of the Modern LanguageAssociation

  • Lecture and poetry reading, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, NC

Cheryl can be contacted about giving a lecture, reading, or presentation here.