Professor of writing and literature, poet, fiction writer. Scholar & Teacher of environmental justice in literature, film, visual arts, and architecture.
Latest News
Cheryl’s Workshop: Spring Forward With Your Writing
March 9, 2025, 12:30-2:30 via Zoom
This workshop is open to writers of all genres and levels. We’re approaching the end of winter, and setting our clocks forward to return to daylight savings. In that spirit, we will draw on a variety of prompts to spring forward in our writing. These include randomness, set forms, and techniques drawn from other creative arts.
Mom Egg Review’s 2024 Pushcart Prize Nominees
FICTION
Cheryl J. Fish, “A Seven-Year-Old Left Alone Shivering”
This is an excerpt from a story that appeared in Issue 22 of Mom Egg Review, 2024.
A Seven-Year-Old Left Alone Shivering
He stands outside waiting to be picked up from school. Snow, deep and fluffy, surrounds his boots and covers the ground, tree branches, buildings. It’s not dirty snow like in New York City where he comes from. He’s in Finland, where his mother brings him so she can have a chance to teach abroad. His mind repeats “where is Sari? She is never late.” Sari is a tall woman from the aftercare center who meets him with a cookie as they walk to the other location. Everyone has gone home. He stands in an empty yard, cold and blue.
Blue. Like that Lego container. Hundreds, no thousands of them, to build cars that turn into cargo ships, castles with dungeons and killer robots, little men running the society, woods surrounding it. His feet, pins and needles. How much time has passed? He lifts one boot, then the other. He must beat back the shiver that wants to control him. He pulls his hat over his ears. Sari will be there at any moment to take him a few blocks past that frozen pond where children sip juice and munch crackers before going out again. They will slide down the hill on those plastic disks, throw snow and ice until they stop them. Then go inside, pull off boots, sit at tables and kick each other underneath. He wishes he had a small grey Nokia phone like his friends. He stays in his spot by the door, shifting because he’s not sure what else to do.
Village Story Salon: A Monthly Prose Reading Series on a THEME
Curated by Cheryl J. Fish and Jonathan Vatner
A new monthly reading series at the @hudsonparknypl … join us!
Cheryl J. Fish’s ingenious, smart, and witty debut novel follows three compelling characters as their lives and desires intertwine. On or off the yoga mat, these characters attempt to expand their emotional as well as bodily flexibility while battling jealousy, rejection, and the stranglehold of the past. Fish’s deep knowledge of yoga and of the psychological, geographical, and sensory terrain renders this ambitious novel absorbing and impressive. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Just like her characters, we can find ourselves carried away.
–Lee Upton, author of Visitations: Stories
Cheryl J. Fish's debut novel OFF THE YOGA MAT is smart, soulful, and surprising. I found myself deeply touched by the struggles of her flawed characters as they negotiate work, love, and dumpster diving.
–Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River, American Salvage and Mothers Tell Your Daughters
Off the Yoga Mat is an intricate saga of three lost souls journeying into the past, the present, and the future to cure ailments of the mind, the body, and the heart. Every page is a gift of wisdom and surprise, rendered in lush, poetic prose. It's a book of ideas with tremendous emotional power.
—Jonathan Vatner, author of The Bridesmaids Union
Available to order from Livingston Press. Available wherever fine books are sold.
Off the Yoga Mat
With age 40 and the year 2000 (Y2K) looming, Nate, Nora, and Lulu find their lives unraveling, their aspirations dashed. Nate, dead broke, in his eighth year of graduate delves hopelessly into yoga. Nate's ex-girlfriend Nora finagles a position in Finland where she tries on men like miniskirts and embraces sisu, the Finnish concept of perseverance, in pursuit of motherhood. And yogi Lulu, Nate’s talented teacher, yearns to get to the bottom of her nightmares of childhood abuse as she travels to her hometown, New Orleans, to care for her ailing mother.
Off the Yoga Mat explores jealousy, bends of the body, and the courage to confront traumatic memory. Told in alternating chapters by Nate, Lulu, and Nora, the novel takes the reader on three risky coming-of-middle age journeys through sensuality, emotional evolution, and breathing, deep.
Debut novel, Off the Yoga Mat published by Livingston Press. PUB DATE 10/20/22.
Here is Cheryl reading an excerpt from the novel.
Excerpt from OFF THE YOGA MAT in Boog City #146, January, 2022
“Fish has created some interesting dynamics of adulthood amid Y2K tension, and she ably explores the shifting nature of relationships without casting anyone as the villain. Ultimately, each finds their own way without sabotaging anyone else’s happiness. —Kirkus Review
Case Study: How I Published My Debut Novel Off the Yoga Mat on Authors Publish
I am writing about what happened to me, at the threshold of publishing my debut novel. After fifteen years, after realizing there are notable paths to publication that don’t require an agent, Off the Yoga Mat is coming out with Livingston Press of University of West Alabama, a small university press.
Review of Off the Yoga Mat In Mom Egg Review by Demisty Bellinger
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2022/10/cheryl_j_fishs.html CHERYL’S MUSICAL PLAY LIST ON THE LARGE HEARTED BOY BLOG
Interview With Cheryl J. Fish About Off the Yoga Mat on Deborah Kalb’s Blog
Instagram Reel is live!
My new Instagram reel is complete. Preview Nate, Lulu and Nora on their adventures in NYC, Finland, and New Orleans. Thanks to Marissa Sanchez and Kate Rock.
Cheryl’s Michigan book tour June, 2023 with Mary Jane Pories included workshops, readings and salons.
FINLAND BOOK TOUR, MAY 2023
Reading from OFF THE YOGA MAT at Rosebud bookstore in Helsinki with Erica Mena, Laura Lennes, and Petra Vallila.
Workshops offered
I taught a workshop on in March, 2023, on writing Abecedarian poems and prose, through AITB - Art in the Basin. The workshop will be generative and open to all levels.
Talks and Publications
With Mary Jane Pories at Felt Mansion, Holland, Mi.
Here I am with Bonnie Jo Campbell at H House, Kalamazoo, where we read and were interviewed by Bonnie for her podcast.
Monday Oct. 24 6-8 P.M.
Cheryl J. Fish, Valery Oisteanu, and Thomas Adcock
Hosted By Wayne Kral
First Floor Walk Up Reading Series F Train To Second Ave.
P&T Knitwear Books And Café 180 Orchard Street (Btw Houston & Stanton)
Free To Attend (Books For Sale)
Friday, Oct. 21, from 5:30-7:30 in Park Slope, Brooklyn
Book Party! Cheryl J. Fish's Off the Yoga Mat House Party Book Sale and Signing
with Guest Musicians.
Light refreshments served
At Jean Ende’s brownstone (windows open, fan)
204 Berkeley Place Apt 2. Brooklyn. RSVP by 10/18 to tribecagal312@gmail.com
Saturday, October 8, 2022 at 4 Pm – 6 PM
Book Party! Cheryl J. Fish's Off the Yoga Mat
Lucky 168 Avenue B between 10th and 11th
Celebrate the East Village launch of Cheryl J. Fish's debut novel, the story of Nate, Nora and Lulu, who live, work and play in the East Village in the 1990s. Join us in the back yard where Cheryl will read and sign copies, discounted for attendees. Guest poet Lydia Cortes
Link: https://www.luckyonb.com/events/2022/10/8/book-party-cheryl-j-fishs-off-the-yoga-mat
Live Stream | Cheryl J. Fish presents Off the Yoga Mat in conversation with Christy Alexander Hallberg
I am pleased to invite you to a book talk and reading sponsored by my recent poetry publisher, Shanti Arts. Three poets from the press will showcase the influence of the natural world, the ecstasy of discovery, the cultures of Finland and Ireland, grief in the modern world and other topics addressed in their work. It will be on Zoom on Sunday, May 22, 2022, at 5:30 p.m. EDT. Email publisher@shantiarts.com to RSVP and receive the Zoom link a day or two in advance.
Authors Reading Virtually:
Cheryl J. Fish Online
Wednesday, August 24, 2022, 7 p.m.-8 p.m. Peter White Public Library Zoom. Teens, Family, Adults, Seniors.
Cheryl J. Fish reads selections of poetry and prose from her collections The Sauna Is Full of Maids and her forthcoming novel Off the Yoga Mat. Fish has been a Fulbright professor in Finland and is an environmental justice scholar. .
Featured reader: KGB BAR LIT Launch April 28, 2022
Featured reader: KGB Monday Night Poetry Readings with Daisy Fried and Joshua Weiner, April 11, 2022
Invited Feature Poet: Westfield State University, Westfield MA, March 31, 2022
Featured reader, Phoenix Poetry Series, March 24, 2022
Invited Speaker, June Jordan: Pleasures of Perspectives | WDA Conference 2022
A conference organized by Womxn in Design and Architecture, Thursday, February 24 & Friday, February 25, 2022
THE SAUNA IS FULL OF MAIDS, poetry and photography book about Finnish Sauna culture, friendship, and Kalevala and Sami myth, from Shanti Arts, summer solstice, 2021.