Sheila Hackbarth
Sheila Ngonzi Hackbarth is an author, artist, and advocate whose work explores the friction between the mystical and the mundane. While whimsy is at the heart of her award-winning children’s debut, Lion’s Water, her adult fiction occupies the liminal space of magical realism—probes how spirituality, witchcraft, and race intersect with the realities of religion, poverty, and politics. Through her essays and short stories, Sheila transforms the complexities of rare disease and social identity into narratives of radical resilience.
Sheila was born in Detroit to a Ugandan mother and an Irish American father. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, their two sons, and two Rhodesian Ridgebacks.
