Sean Sexton

was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family's Treasure Hammock Ranch, eight miles west of Vero Beach, Florida.  He divides his time between taking care of a 600 acre cow-calf and seed stock cattle operation, painting and writing.  He is married to artist Sharon Sexton, they have two grown children and live on their homestead on the ranch in a house they built with their hands.

 

He has kept journal-sketch books drawn from his life since 1973 and was awarded an Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the State of Florida in 2000-2001. He is the author of Waldo’s Mountain, Brief History of a Small Elevation, Waterview Press, 2001, Blood Writing, Poems, Anhinga Press, 2009 and The Empty Tomb, University of Alabama's Slash Pine Press, 2013. He was a presenter at the National Grazing Lands Coalition Conference in Orlando on the subject of Art and Agriculture. He has been a panelist at the Florida Literary Arts Coalition Conference in St. Augustine, FL since 2012, and a regular performer at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada since 2011. In 2017 He completed a three city Southern Poetry Tour with Alice Friman and presented his poetry at "O' Miami" with Campbell McGrath and Dylan Brennan at the Betsy on South Beach last April. He became inaugural Poet Laureate of Indian River County in 2016. 

 

He was part of an exhibition commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the University of Florida Gallery this summer entitled "Reading Between Lives" featuring Art and correspondence of a 35 year friendship with Artist, Michael Kemp, of Micanopy, FL.  On Feb. 21st, 2014, He received Citizen of the Year  from the Environmental and Land Use Law Section of the Florida Bar. On February 19, 2015 he gave a presentation on Florida's Cattle Industry from an Art and Poetry perspective as part of the 2015 Florida Humanities Speaker Series at the Emerson Center in Vero Beach.