Shonda Buchanan is an award-winning poet and fiction writer.  Also a creative nonfiction essayist, she is editor of Voices from Leimert Park: A Poetry Anthology. She is an Eloise Klein-Healy Scholarship recipient, a Sundance Institute fellow and a PEN Center Emerging Voice fellow. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and several grants from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Former managing editor of Turning Point Magazine, Shonda is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Hampton University, teaching fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, senior seminar, composition and magazine writing.  She has published three chapbooks of poetry. 

Publications: Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today and The International Review of African American Art. Radio appearances, Marketplace Radio and NPR’s Tell Me More. Published in various anthologies including Step into a World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature,Arise! Magazine, Def Jam Poetry’s Bum Rush the Page, Geography of Rage:Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 and Rivendell, and online journals, ENotes, Writers at Work and Long Story Short, which selected her poem, “At Buckroe Beach” as Best Poem of the Year for their 2010 contest. Shonda recently completed her memoir,Black Indian. 

Presentations/Lectures/Workshops:  “The Impact of Art,” “Writing as Healing,” “Writing About War,” “Where are the Happy Poems?” “Everything but the Kitchen Sink: 101 Creative Writing Workshop Ideas,” “Writing the Family Sestina,” “Is African American Poetry Significant, Even when it’s “Slamming?” (with Ishmael Reed); “Poem and Song as a Social Political Tool in the Work of the Artist: Nina Simone, SoniaSanchez, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman and Li-Young Lee”; “Family, Language and Truth: Naming Ghosts to Reclaim African/Native American Heritage”; “Poetry Workshop: Breaking Open Language.” “Writing Narrative Nonfiction for Self, Magazines and Literary Journals,” “Writing for Magazines,” “Senior Seminar I/II–Critical Theory-Narrative Nonfiction Emphasis,” “Honors English: Discovering Narrative Nonfiction,” “Haunts and Hovels of the Harlem Renaissance Expatriate Writers,” “African American Literature,” “Defining Culture, Identity, Gender and Environment through Literary and Visual Textual Analysis,” “Writing, Reading and Identity” “The Persistence of Light vs. Dark in Literature, Film and Legislature,” “Creative Writer’s Workshop–Poetry/Fiction,” “Voices in the Garden--Poetry Across Cultures,” “Elements of Fiction,” “Writing Research Papers.”

Preferred Audiences:  Everyone. Students, Adults, Soldiers and their families, Military Facilities, Cultural Organizations, At-risk Youth, Middle and High School, Colleges/Universities, Community Centers, Arts Organizations, Museums and Art Galleries, Senior Citizens.

Available: Available for workshops and readings at all locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Follow my 2013 blog while in Bath, England studying the Native American presence in England.

Long “Narrative” Bio (see below)”

Shonda Buchanan was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan where she spent much of her adolescence curled up in libraries, bathtubs, and on her front porch, reading. In search of other artists, she left home at eighteen, right after high school, and went to work as an au pair in Alexandria, VA, for the summer. In the fall, she moved to Los Angeles. The day she arrived in LA, October 17, 1987, one of the worst earthquakes in the history of the bear state rocked her Beverly Hills hotel. “I wasn’t afraid,” she said. “Instead, I realized that my ghosts had followed me.” They wanted her to write about them in earnest. From 1987-2004, she spent the next eighteen years answering the call, writing poetry, fiction and essays about her hometown, the landscape, and the people who gave her their stories. When her daughter, Afiya, was born in 1990, Shonda’s essays for the LA Times and the LA Weekly expanded from art, culture, and community to parenthood and identity.

Editor of Voices from Leimert Park: A Poetry Anthology which published 49 local black and Latino/a poets, the book encompassed the underrepresented voices in the Los Angeles literary landscape. “This book allowed me to give back to the writers, singers and artists who’d helped me shape and hone my voice.”

Over the years, Shonda has received many accolades and fellowships. She is a Sundance Institute fellow and a PEN Center Emerging Voice fellow. She freelances for The Writer’s Chronicle and The International Review of African American Art. She is published in various anthologies, including Step into a World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature, Arise! Magazine, Def Jam Poetry’s Bum Rush the Page, Geography of Rage:Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 and Rivendell. She received the Eloise Klein-Healy Scholarship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and several Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grants.

Coming to Hampton University was always a dream of hers. As an assistant professor in the Department of English at Hampton University, she teaches fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, writing for magazines, composition and senior seminar. While researching her memoir, Black Indian, Shonda discovered that her ancestors on her mother’s side had originated in and had migrated from North Carolina to Michigan. The often said “you know we got some Indian in us” from her childhood became real when she discovered she was 11th Generation Cherokee. This knowledge was clarified for her, though she already claimed the Choctaw Nation on her father’s side, that her work as a writer and researcher about Black and Native American culture confirmed what her ghosts had been whispering all along. Tell our stories.

Shonda conducts presentations and panel discussions on the shared heritage of African Americans and Indigenous Americans. Ms. Buchanan sings on Eastern Sky American Indian Drum, an intertribal Virginia-based drum. Her collection of poetry, Whale Songs from a RedBlack, will be published in April 2010. She is working on her second book of poetry, In Goddess Country, and a novel. Shonda received her B.A. and M.A. from Loyola Marymount University in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis, and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from Antioch University (June ‘10). Ms. Buchanan reads poetry locally and nationally, as well as conducts book discussions for libraries, schools and community organizations. She is former managing editor of Turning Point Magazine. Shonda Buchanan lives with her husband Harold Caldwell in Hampton, Virginia. 

Teaching:

Shonda has taught courses entitled “Writing Narrative Nonfiction for Self, Magazines and Literary Journals,” “Writing for Magazines,” “Senior Seminar I/II–Critical Theory-Narrative Nonfiction Emphasis,” “Honors English: Discovering Narrative Nonfiction,” “Haunts and Hovels of the Harlem Renaissance Expatriate Writers,” “African American Literature,” “Defining Culture, Identity, Gender and Environment through Literary and Visual Textual Analysis,” “Writing, Reading and Identity (English Composition),” “The Persistence of Light vs. Dark in Literature, Film and Legislature,” “Creative Writer’s Workshop–Poetry/Fiction,” “Voices in the Garden--Poetry Across Cultures,” “Elements of Fiction” and “Writing Research Papers.”

Research Interests:

Her research interests include Creative Nonfiction; Writing the Memoir; Contemporary Essays, Poetry and Fiction; Making the Personal Narrative a Critical Tool; Cultural Commentary; Editing and Practical Application of Magazine Techniques and Strategies; The Craft of Fiction, Poetry and Narrative Nonfiction; Representation of Culture, Politics and Social Identity in Literature in a Green World; The Role of the Artist; Women’s Studies and the Goddess Narrative; Women’s Literature; The Indigenous American Narrative in Literature and Film; Hip Hop, Identity and Women; Nature Writing.