A native of Minnesota, Francine Sterle was educated at Oxford University, Oxford, England, and Bemidji State University, Bemidji, Minnesota, where she earned both B.S. and M.A. degrees in English as well as at Warren Wilson College, Asheville, North Carolina, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry. She has studied writing in a variety of settings, including Oxford University, the Spoleto Writers' Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Awards include four Pushcart Prize nominations, a Loft-McKnight Foundation Award, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, a Lake Superior Contemporary Writers Award, residencies at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Leighton Studios at the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary, as well as both a Fellowship Grant and a Career Opportunity Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Her poems have been published widely in such literary journals as The North American Review, Nimrod, CutBank, Great River Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Atlanta Review and have been anthologized in To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-territorial Days to the Present, 33 Minnesota Poets and The Cancer Poetry Project. My works include a chapbook, The White Bridge (Poetry Harbor, 1999), and a full-length collection, Every Bird is One Bird, which won the 2001 Editor's Prize from Tupelo Press and was a finalist for a Northeast Minnesota Book Award. Presently, she is on the Board of Directors for the Laurentian Cultural and Arts Alliance, Virginia, MN, as well as the Advisory Board for Lake Superior Writers, Duluth, MN. Ms. Sterle works as a private poetry mentor and live on the West Two River with her husband Jonathan Speare, a clinical psychologist, two Maine Coon cats and an exuberant Rhodesian Ridgeback.