Sheree Lynn Fitch OC (born 3 December 1956) is a Canadian writer and literacy advocate.
Fitch was born on 3 December 1956 in Ottawa, Ontario, where her father was serving with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
[3] Fitch attended St. Thomas University in Fredericton as a mature student and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1987.
In it she coined the term "utterature" to refer to "all literature which depends upon the oral tradition and community of listeners".
[4] In the 1990s Fitch was based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where her second husband Gilles Plante worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
She performed her poems at schools and libraries for several years before her first book, Toes in My Nose, with illustrations by Molly Bobak, was published in 1987.
[17]: 205 Like her work for children, the adult poems play with words, but the material is darker, as in "Civil Servant", in which a receptionist in an unemployment office imagines herself as Saint Peter at the Pearly gates, asking her clients "Can I have your sin?"
The heroine is a single parent and a writer with "realistic financial and familial problems, who experiences dark times without losing her playfulness and humour".
[5] As a result, she became involved in the Peter Gzowski Invitational (PGI) golf tournaments, which raise funds for literacy organizations.
[23] Fitch was granted an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Saint Mary's University in Halifax in May 1998.
[25] St. Thomas University awarded her an honorary doctorate in May 2010, citing her contributions as an author, educator, and "tireless advocate for literacy".