Shery Alexander Heinis is an emerging poet in the poetry community in Ottawa, Canada. She was born and raised on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean, and currently lives and works in Ottawa.  She studied International Relations at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) and Cambridge University (UK) and is a former diplomat with the High Commission for the Countries of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States in Ottawa.  She is widely travelled and has worked in a number of areas including diplomacy, foreign affairs, global development, trade, tourism and investment, and small business in both the public and private sectors.  

As a young girl, reading and writing were her greatest passions.  She took up writing again a few years ago to help her navigate some challenging times in her life. Writing has since become a refuge, an avenue to express her creativity and imagination, and to articulate her life experiences and observations. She wrote her first chapbook A Greater Whole in 2014, following which she decided to take the plunge and work at writing her first volume of poetry.  As life would have it, she had to put this on hold for over a year for medical reasons.  She began writing again in 2016 and plans to release her first volume of poetry in fall 2017.  Like her completely un-retouched photos here, her poetry is imbued with eclectic imagery, colour, soul, power and warmth.