Sharon Dean lives on the far north coast of New South Wales, where she runs a life story project for a residential aged care organisation. Dean has a strong interest in Japanese literary genres, and in 2009 won the Haiku Dreaming Australia Award. In 2011, she completed a PhD in Writing through Griffith University. The recipient of a Chancellor's Medal, she was that year's top ranked PhD candidate within the university's Arts, Education and Law Group. The main component of Dean's PhD was a biography of the Australian haiku writer, Janice M. Bostok (q.v.).
In addition to the works listed on AustLit, Dean's haiku, tanka and haibun have also appeared regularly in a range of Australian and international literary journals and anthologies. The journals include World Haiku Review (2005), Haiku Dreaming Australia (2006-2009), FreeXpresSion (2007-2009), Contemporary Haibun (2007), Haibun Today (2007), contemporary haibun online (2007-2008), Simply Haiku (2007-2008), Shamrock Haiku Journal (2008) and Presence (2009-2010); the anthologies include sand between the toes (2007), hawks in flight (2007), Brisbane City Cats Virtual Poetry Anthology (2007) and Wind over Water (2009).
Dean has also presented the conference papers 'Fresh Seeing: When Short Forms of Poetry Inspire Long Works of Fiction', Australasian Association of Writing Programs Conference (2006) and 'Sensing a Life: A Preview of the Forthcoming Biography of Australian Haiku Writer Janice M. Bostok', Haiku Pacific Rim Conference (2009).
Several of Dean's haiku have won or placed in awards and competitions. Dean won the 2008 Ikebana/Haiku Award (part of the Brisanbe Garden Expo), the 2009 Haiku Dreaming Australia Award and the Presence Best-of-Issue Award for issue 41 (2010). She has also placed in the Paper Wasp Jack Stamm Haiku Award (2007), the Irish Haiku Society International Haiku Competition (2008) and the Oi Ocha New Haiku Contest, Tokyo (2010).
