Cheryl Wilder is an author, coach, and aspiring speaker. She helps clients connect their personal lives with their skills and knowledge to create a professional presence aligned with their values. A natural mediator and believer in the journey as a destination, Cheryl has an instinct to understand people, anticipate their needs, and listen to unvoiced questions. She’s passionate about helping clients see purpose and connections in everyday occurrences.
An advocate for writing, Cheryl is the Burlington Writers Club president (2022-24) and co-chair of their Alamance County, NC Student Writing Contest. She’s co-founder and editor of Waterwheel Review and teaches writing workshops. As a poet, Cheryl could talk about line breaks all day. Other topics of proficiency are poetry and architecture, shame and forgiveness, the arts and community, and reinventing the self.
Unleashing My Best Self
As a single mother and nontraditional student, I earned my BFA at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and my MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. With fifteen years in restaurant hospitality, ten years as a web designer and small business owner, and eighteen+ years in the study of writing, I bring creative perseverance to my work. I’m also hopelessly optimistic, a big-picture thinker, and energized by introspection.
I decided to become a coach while working with a web client who wanted to explore personal stories to better understand herself as a professional artist and new solopreneur. To help her, I brought all my skills to the table in a way I hadn’t done before, but I needed to learn more. Once I discovered that coaching was my next growth opportunity, I became a Certified Life Coach (CLC) in the Life Purpose Institute (LPI) coach training program. LPI’s training programs are accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
Teacher and Speaker
I’m available for workshops, writing festivals, speaking, and poetry readings. I’m just starting to promote myself in this area, so more details to come soon. In the meantime, please connect with me through the online form, and let’s talk.
As an artist, I reinvent myself all the time. I know what it’s like to feel unmoored in a career, passionate about a vocation that doesn’t pay the bills, and determined to live a meaningful life. All of this while changing diapers, caretaking for a dying parent, hiking a mountainside, and dancing in the kitchen. Let’s connect and see how I can help you, your group, organization, or students unleash their best selves!
Author Bio
Cheryl Wilder’s collection, Anything That Happens, a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection (Press 53, 2021), was named Second Finalist in the Poetry Society of Virginia North American Book Award and received Honorable Mention in the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her forthcoming poetry collection (Press 53, 2024)—companion to her first full-length collection—is being supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and local grants administrator, Durham Arts Council. Her work appears in Crossing the Rift: North Carolina Poets on 9/11 & Its Aftermath (Press 53), Barely South Review, Verse Daily, Cream City Review, and Architects + Artisans, among other publications. Author of the chapbook, What Binds Us (Finishing Line Press, 2017), co-founder of Waterwheel Review, and 2022-24 president of the Burlington Writers Club, Cheryl earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, served as writer-in-residence at SistaWRITE, and held a residency at SAFTA.
