Sharmagne Leland-St. John

Sharmagne Leland-St. John
Poet Sharmagne Leland-St.John
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	United States/Lineal Descendant of The Confederated Colville Tribe of Nespelem, Washington
Spouse	Richard Sylbert (1991-2002)
Children	Daisy Alexandra Sylbert-Torres

Sharmagne Leland-St. John is a 21st-century poet. Leland-St. John is best known for the poem "I Said Coffee," for which she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007. With its “deadpan puncturing of the male ego and its assumption of sexual implication where there is none,” this piece has become one of her most frequently published and requested poems. She has received a total of 7 Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2013 International Book Award honoring Excellence in Mainstream and Independent Publishing for best Poetry Anthology.

Her father Jerome was an actor at the time of her birth, but gave up acting to become an animal trapper in the jungles of Tegucigalpa in Honduras. During her childhood he would disappear for months at a time, collecting exotic animals with which to supply zoos and private estates. He also had a pheasant farm and quail ranch in Mexico City, tried his hand at ranching in Las Vegas, and eventually settled down in Tarzana in California’s San Fernando Valley.

Leland-St. John’s mother, child actress Roseanne Gahan, worked with Cecil B. DeMille. Roseanne’s father Arvé, (virtuoso violinist John Harvey Gahan), was a child prodigy in Canada. He began playing at age 3; at the age of 5 he played a command performance for the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII). Gahan married Josephine Morong Runnels, the granddaughter of Chief Que Que Tas of the Sanpoil (tribe) in the Pacific Northwest.

Leland-St. John was the second child born to Jerome and Roseanne. Due to Jerome's infidelity, the marriage was rocky from the start. When Leland-St. John was 3 years old, her father left the family, sued for custody, won, and then placed both children in a Catholic convent.

Roseanne's childhood nanny offered to take both girls and raise them while Jerome traveled around the world. He agreed and the girls were placed in a home in downtown Los Angeles with a guardian and the governess. Leland-St. John became an avid reader who devoured dozens of books. She has often been quoted as saying, “Reading is one of the deepest joys I have ever known.” At age 10 she contracted polio and spent the next two years bedridden. During this time she began to write poetry and experiment with writing what would now be termed "flash fiction."