Kalamazoo, Michigan native Shonda Buchanan is a poet, essayist and memoirist with a mission to inspire, educate and heal with her work and teaching. An Oxfam Ambassador, Master Artist for the City of Los Angeles, USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow and PEN America Fellow, Shonda currently teaches at Loyola Marymount University. Author of five books, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, which was chosen by PBS NewsHour as a "top 20 books to read" to learn about institutional racism, Shonda hopes that her books create a space and capacity to explore identity, race, intersectionality and ethnicity from a place of empowerment and grace. Currently shopping her Nina Simone collection of poetry, Shonda’s other upcoming books are America’s Bloodflowers: Poems; Children of the Mixed Race Trail (essay collection); and Artificial Earth: Poems and Essays for California Indians and the first founding Mixed Race settlers of Los Angeles. A descendant of the Mende African nation of Sierra Leone, Coharie, Choctaw and Eastern Band Cherokee and Europeans, Shonda lives and writes on Tongva and Chumash lands in Los Angeles, California.
