Erin Sharkey is a cultural producer, writer, arts and abolition organizer, and cultural worker based in Minneapolis, on unceded Dakota land. She is the co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental production collective called Free Black Dirt and a steward of The Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite place centering BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks in central MN. Erin has served as producer for a number of film and theatre projects including Sweetness of Wild, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower Opera, and Small Business Revolution (Hulu). She is editing, A Darker Wilderness, a forthcoming anthology of Black nature writing for Milkweed Editions (2023). Erin was awarded the Asé Lab Fellowship from Penumbra Theatre, and the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. Currently, she teaches at Hamline University and with Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.