Sheri Reynolds
Sheri Reynolds is an author of contemporary Southern fiction.
Sheri Reynolds was born and raised in rural South Carolina. She graduated from Conway High School in 1985, Davidson College in 1989, and Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992.
Her published novels include Bitterroot Landing, The Rapture of Canaan (an Oprah book club selection and New York Times bestseller), A Gracious Plenty (98), Firefly Cloak (06), The Sweet In-Between (08), and The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb (12) and The Tender Grave (21). Her first play, Orabelle's Wheelbarrow, won the Women Playwrights' Initiative playwriting competition for 2005.
Also Professor of English and the Ruth and Perry Morgan Chair of Southern Literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, Sheri teaches creative writing and literature classes. She won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia in 2003. In 2005, she received a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts in playwriting. She has also taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, The College of William and Mary, and Davidson College.
Sheri lives in the town of Cape Charles on Virginia's Eastern Shore.
“Sometimes something comes along and tears your roots right out the ground, and that’s when you know you been planted too long.”
“I felt the way I feel sometimes right before you go to sleep, when all you want to do is sleep, and then suddenly, when you're almost there, when your mind goes dizzy and it's almost like you don't have a body at all, your remember how long the night is, how you might not wake back up. And like a shock, you're sitting straight up, scared to do the thing you've done every day of your life.”
“Your truth may not look like mine, but that is not what matters. What matters is this: You can look at a scar and see hurt, or you can look at a scar and see healing.”
“There's only so much room in one heart. You can fill it up with love or you can fill it with resentment. But every bit of resentment you hold takes space away from the love. And the resentment don't do no good noway, but look what love can do.”
“When Constance was born, Aunt Glo named her after the dormitory she lived in at college: Constance Hall.”
“Then I wondered if that's all God ever is--somebody who loves you enough to come back from the dead to visit every now and again. Or if that's all that other people ever are--different faces of God walking around.”
“Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes shape.”