Shara McCallum (born 1972) is a Jamaican-American poet and educator. She is a Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University and is known for her work exploring themes of identity, history, and the Caribbean diaspora.
McCallum was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Jamaican father and a Venezuelan-American mother. She moved to the United States at the age of nine. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Miami, a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Binghamton University.
Her literary career began prominently with the publication of her first collection, The Water Between Us (1999), which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Her subsequent works include Song of My Hunger (2002), This Strange Land (2011), Madwoman (2017), and No Ruined Stone (2021). No Ruined Stone is a verse novel that reimagines the life of Scottish poet Robert Burns had he followed through with his plans to migrate to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation.
McCallum's poetry frequently incorporates both Standard English and Jamaican Patois, reflecting the linguistic complexities of her heritage. Her writing often examines the intersections of race, gender, and personal and collective memory.
Throughout her career, McCallum has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress. In 2022, her collection No Ruined Stone was awarded the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the poetry category. She served as the Penn State Laureate for the 2021–2022 academic year.