Born in Oklahoma in 1942, Sharon Villines is a writer and artist living in Washington DC. For 25 years she taught a variety of arts and art business subjects at SUNY Empire State College in Albany and New York City. She took early retirement in 1996 to write and pursue other projects. Since 2000, she has been active in the intentional communities movement living in Takoma Village Cohousing in Washington, DC. She has maintained blogs and participates in forums and email discussions on a variety of topics related to self-governance, inclusive decision-making, cohousing, affordable housing, and other topics. She publishes frequently in Communities, the journal of the Intentional Communities Association.
In 1990, she formed Deadly Serious Press, publishing a bi-monthly newsletter for writers of mystery and detective fiction, "Deadly Serious," a guide to research sources related to forensics and other topics. The press also published the Deadly Directory, a guide to publications, bookstores, and other businesses related to mystery and detective fiction. The press was sold to Kate Derie in 1998 who continued to publish the Deadly Directory. The Deadly Serious newsletter ceased publication in 1997 with a plan to reformat it as a guide to research sources for writers of all kinds since the subscribers represented all fields.
In 2002, she began studying self-governance methods for non-profit, cooperative, and community organizations. This culminated in the publication with John Buck of "We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy," a comprehensive introduction to sociocratic history, principles, and practices. (First edition, 2007. Second edition, 2017.) She continues consulting and writing on sociocratic governance and the organization of cohousing communities.
Underlying all of this, she has continued developing her art and design skills in the graphic design of books, newsletters, website pages, etc. She has also designed and hosted websites primarily for writers and cohousing communities. She currently publishes two blogs, "Strong Neighborhoods" with a focus on applying what she learned from cohousing communities to all kinds of neighborhoods. The strength of our society depends on the strength of all. A second blog, Pass the Olives, is devoted to more personal biographical writing including ranting and raving.
In 2017, inspired by Wikipedia’s pleas that if every user donated $2.37, they would have total funding for an extended period of time, she set up an automatic payment of $5 every month. It has been incredibly more gratifying than all her donations to political campaigns that were totally unsuccessful in 2016. In addition to microdonations to citizen history as political activism, she has knitted hundreds of pink hats for the Women's Marches.
She continues to live in Washington DC and spends her days writing in one place or another on one topic or another.