Sheila Willis

Sheila Willis  was an American artist, writer, and musician.. As an African American girl in the 1970s, she was inspired by her heroine Nichelle Nichols and became active in Star Trek fandom, eventually publishing multiple fanzines that included the Uhura-inspired Woman, Warrior, Wife. After a stint as a medic in the US Army, Sheila went to nursing school and became an OR nurse specializing in trauma, neurology, and cardiac surgery. In the mid-1980s, while working at GWU Hospital in Washington, DC, she joined the committee of the Maryland Star Trek convention the August Party, where she met fellow musicians T.J. Burnside and Linda Melnick and formed the group Technical Difficulties. TD produced two recordings, Please Stand By in 1986, and Station Break in 1988, which featured many of Sheila's original filk songs. Sheila died of a pulmonary embolism in 2013.