Shonda Buchanan Biography (Long)
Kalamazoo, Michigan native Shonda Buchanan is the author of four books and two poetry anthologies, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, and The Lost Songs of Nina Simone, 2026 winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Poetry Book Award.
An award-winning poet, memoirist and educator with a mission to inspire, educate and heal, Shonda is an Associate Professor of English, Creative Writing & African American Literature at Western Michigan University and also faculty in Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Her memoir, Black Indian, won the 2020 Indie New Generation Book Award and was chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read” to learn about institutional racism. Black Indian begins the saga of her family’s migration stories of Free People of Color communities exploring identity, ethnicity, landscape and loss. Shonda’s collection of poetry, The Lost Songs of Nina Simone, deftly excavates the iconic singer, classical pianist and Civil Rights activist’s life, heritage and artistry.
2023 Best of the Net Nominee from Tab Journal and finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review poetry contest, Shonda’s first collection of poetry, Who’s Afraid of Black Indians? was nominated for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the Library of Virginia Book Awards.
Three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow and Oxfam Ambassador, Shonda is also a USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow and City of Los Angeles (COLA) Department of Cultural Affairs Master Artist Fellow. Former Board of Trustees President for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, Shonda is now a Board member-at-large and a Writer-in-Residence for the organization.
President of the Poetry Society of Michigan, Shonda is also a Board member with the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival and the Kalamazoo Arts Council. Former faculty Coordinator for the Black Land Loss Project, Shonda is the recipient of the Brody Arts Fellowship from the California Community Foundation, a Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grants, the Denise L. Scott and Frank Sullivan Awards, and an Eloise Klein-Healy Scholarship.
A 2025 Chautauqua Institution Literary Arts Program Educator and a 2026 Visiting Author for the African American House at Chautauqua Institution, Shonda is a consulting PEN America Emerging Voices Mentor, Association of Writers & Writing Programs Judge, and Poetry Curator for the Broad Museum and Grand Performances in Los Angeles. Shonda is also a Sundance Institute Writing Arts fellow, a PEN Center Emerging Voices fellow and a Jentel Artist Residency fellow.
For the last 25 years, Shonda has conducted writing workshops, readings and lectures for public, university and community college libraries, the Salvation Army and Goodwill for K-12 and college students, working adults, veterans, the unsheltered and corporations. An educator for over 25 years, DEIA workshop leader and trainer, founding Literary Editor of Harriet Tubman Press, Shonda is an expert in African American and American Indian literature and culture. A journalist for 28+ years, Shonda has freelanced for the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today, Capital & Main, LA Progressive, Westways Magazine, Sisters of AARP, The International Review of African American Art, the Daily Press, Los Angeles Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She commentated for Marketplace Radio and was featured on WHRO's HearSay, and National Public Radio’s Tell Me More.
Featured on PBS Books at the Detroit Book Festival and for PEN America’s PEN Ten, Shonda is also published in Poetry Daily. Tab Journal, Inlandia Institute’s The Black Experience Anthology, The Mississippi Review, Urban Voices: 51 Poems from 51 American Poets, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Art Meets Literature: An Undying Love Affair, Phati’tude Literary Magazine, Red Ink Journal, Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology, 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.
As an Education Specialist (Regional English Language Program) for the U.S. Department of State’s Embassies, Shonda has taught and lectured in Malaysia, Brazil, England, Greece, Amsterdam and Kenya. Shonda has been a consultant, grant reader and manuscript reviewer and/or judge for the Poetry Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Library of Virginia’s Poetry Book Awards, the North Carolina Arts Council Poetry Fellowship, the George Floyd Youth Justice Poetry Contest, the Amanda Gorman Youth Poetry Contest, the Virginia Commission for the Arts Fiction Contest, the Metrorail Public Art Project Poetry Contest, CavanKerry Press, NAACP’s ACT-SO Youth Poetry Contest, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and the Creative Writing Youth Contest for the College Language Association.
As a culture and literary arts ambassador and lecturer, Shonda has conducted workshops and presentations for the U.S. Government Accountability Organization, the U.S. Embassy of Brazil and Kuala Lumpur/U.S. Department of State, the Athens Institute for Education and Research in Athens, Greece, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, Michigan Department of Education, California Poets in the Schools, the Hampton Roads Writers Conference (former Board member), the Poetry Society of Virginia (former Board member) and numerous others.
Former Interim Chair of the Department of English & Foreign Languages at Hampton University where she was an assistant professor for 13 years, Shonda Buchanan was the Fall 2017 Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at William & Mary College. A national and international lecturer and workshop leader, Shonda received an MFA from Antioch University and an MA and BA in English from Loyola Marymount University, where she was a Senior Lecturer in the African American Studies Department. Shonda is also a founding board member of the African American Alumni Association at Loyola Marymount University. In addition to her work as a literary activist, a teaching artist, a diversity expert and a writing mentor, she has taught at Cal State Northridge, Whittier College and Mt. San Antonio College.
Shonda’s forthcoming book, Children of the Mixed Blood Trail (essays, Wayne State University Press, 2029), explores the early 1800s mixed-race migration of African Americans and North American Indians in the US. Currently writing a Black Lives Matter essay collection and a BLM poetry book, America’s Bloodflowers: Poems, as well as Artificial Earth: Poems and Essays about the first founding mixed race “settlers” of Los Angeles and California Indians, Shonda is currently shopping her recently completed second memoir — an adventurous and poignant tale of love, divorce, travel, spirituality and finding joy. Shonda is also working on a collection of Kalamazoo and Mattawan nature poems, as well as a book exploring family, civil rights and cultural inheritance of Black Kalamazoo, and a book of poems about growing up in Kalamazoo.
Descendant of the Mende African nation of Sierra Leone and the West African region, and the Coharie, Choctaw and Eastern Band Cherokee North American nations, and Europeans, Shonda lives and writes in the Midwest on Ojibwe (Anishinaabe), Ottawa and Potawatomi lands and in Los Angeles on Tongva and Chumash lands, yet she considers herself a citizen of the world. Focusing on the intersections of race, identity, migration, landscape and language, Shonda’s work creates space and capacity to explore difficult social, cultural and racial issues from a place of empowerment, motivation and grace. For more information, visit www.shondabuchanan.com, follow @shondabuchanan and sign up for her newsletter, https://shondabuchanan.com/newsletter.