Shonda Buchanan

Shonda Buchanan is an award-winning poet, a fiction and nonfiction writer, and an educator. She is the author of five books, including the award-winning memoir Black Indian (Wayne State University Press, 2019), winner of a 2020 Indie New Generation Book Award; a finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review poetry contest; and a PBS NewsHour selection for the "top 20 books to read" to learn about institutional racism. Buchanan has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is an Oxfam Ambassador.

An educator and journalist for more than 25 years, Buchanan is the founding literary editor of Harriet Tubman Press and an expert in African American and American Indian literature and culture. She has freelanced for the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, and other outlets. Her work is published in Tab, the Mississippi Review, Urban Voices: 51 Poems from 51 American Poets (San Francisco Bay Press, 2014), and other publications.

Buchanan has been awarded fellowships and grants from the California Arts Council, the Sundance Institute, PEN America Emerging Voices, the USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the City of Los Angeles (COLA) Department of Cultural Affairs. She is a faculty member in the Alma College MFA program in creative writing and the consulting curator poet for the Broad Museum. Buchanan is a consultant, grant, manuscript reviewer, and judge for the Poetry Foundation. She earned an MFA from Antioch University and an MA and a BA in English from Loyola Marymount University, where she currently teaches. Descended from African nations; Coharie, Choctaw, and Eastern Band Cherokee Native Americans; and Europeans, Buchanan lives and writes in Los Angeles on Tongva and Chumash lands.