Daughter of Barry Pitman, film producer for the Australian Broadcasting Commission and weather presenter on Channel 2 and later Channel 9, and Heather Steen, ABC radio drama producer, Sheryn began her professional acting career for the ABC and commercial radio at the age of 13, and began writing for ABC radio at the age of 15.
The eldest of five children, she grew up in Adelaide, and attended St Andrew's Primary School and Methodist Ladies' College on scholarships. She studied music, voice and movement, gained a BA (1978) and Dip Ed (1981) at the University of Adelaide, and in 1997 was completing a Masters Degree in Environmental Studies. For five years she worked as a Secondary School teacher, teaching English, Drama, Media Studies and Social Science. She completed a Diploma in the Art and Science of Linguistic Programming (communication psychology) with John Seymour Associates in the UK (1992) while working as a multimedia consultant on the design of software in the application of Neuro Linguistic Programming.
She is now concentrating on screenwriting in both the documentary and dramatic genre, on film directing and on script editing. She has written plays for stage, screen, television and radio, was a regular writer for the Channel 7 Children's Television Unit in the late seventies, and has worked in several capacities, including as writer, on the national daily children's TV programme, "The Music Shop". She has adapted some well-known children's books for the stage (see below) and her many radio adaptations include Space Demons (by Gillian Rubinstein, qv) and Ruth Park's books, My Sister Sif, Come Danger Come Darkness (for the BBC) and Playing Beattie Bow. She won the National Hi-Fi Award 1978 for "Some Moments in Time", several film and television awards including the NY Film and Television Festival Silver Award 1988 and Gold Award 1989, the Houston International Film Festival Gold Award 1989 for "The Secret", a Literary Board Grant in 1983, a Playwright-in-Residence Grant with the Patch Theatre Centre, the International Radio Fest NY Gold Medal 1989 and International Literature Awards for radio (1990) for the children's radio programme "Ticklepot", for which she was the principal writer. In 1979 she formed a partnership, Fantasy Productions, to produce creative audio material for children.
