Sheila Caroline Ballantyne (née Weibert; July 26, 1937 – May 2, 2007) was an American novelist and short story writer. Her work primarily focused on the shifting roles of women during first-wave feminism.[1]
| Born | Sheila Caroline Weibert (1937-07-26)July 26, 1937 Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Died | May 2, 2007(2007-05-02) (aged 69) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Mills College |
| Notable works | Imaginary Crimes |
| Spouse | Philip Spielman (m. 1963) |
Ballantyne was born Sheila Caroline Weibert in Seattle, Washington.[1] Ballantyne's mother died of cancer when she Ballantyne ten years old, and she and her sister were raised by her widowed father in Seattle.[1][2] After graduating high school, she enrolled at Mills College in San Francisco, studying writing.[1]
After college, Ballantyne worked in the medical records department of Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco.[2] There, she met Philip Spielman, a psychoanalyst whom she subsequently married.[2] The couple had one son, Stefan, and a daughter, Anya.[1] She published her debut novel, Norma Jean and the Termite Queen, in 1975, using her mother's maiden name of Ballantyne as a pen name.[1]
In 1982, Ballantyne published the semi-autobiographical Imaginary Crimes, which documents the upbringing of two young girls in 1960s Portland, Oregon.[1] The novel helped earn Ballantyne a Guggenheim Fellowship the following year,[2] and was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1994, starring Harvey Keitel, Fairuza Balk, Kelly Lynch, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Elisabeth Moss.[1]
Beginning in 1984, she began teaching writing at Mills College, her alma mater, where she worked for 12 years.[1] In 1988, she published Life on Earth, a collection of short stories which present death as a nameless personified villain.[1]
Ballantyne died at her home in Berkeley, California on May 2, 2007 of multisystem atrophy, aged 69.[1]