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Shonda Buchanan is an award-winning poet, memoirist, and educator who focuses on the intersections of race, identity, migration, landscape, and language. Born and raised in Kalamazoo, she is author of Black Indian (2019), chosen as one of the PBS NewsHour’s top 20 books about institutional racism. Her other books include the poetry collections Equipoise (2017), Who’s Afraid of Black Indians? (2012), and The Lost Songs of Nina Simone (forthcoming). Her collection of essays,  is also forthcoming from Wayne State University Press. 

Shonda Buchanan earned both her BA and MA in English at Loyola Marymount University, and her MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. For more than 20 years, she has taught creative writing and BIPOC/American literature. Currently a faculty member in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Alma College, Shonda has also served as assistant professor and interim chair of the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Hampton University in Virginia. In addition, she has held appointments in the African American Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University and in the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Northridge. 

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Shonda Buchanan is a twice Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, an Oxfam Ambassador, and a fellow of the California Arts Council, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and PEN America’s Emerging Voices. She is also the founding literary editor of the Harriet Tubman Press and board president of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, one of the oldest arts organizations in the country. 

Shonda Buchanan is a descendant of the Mende African nation of Sierra Leone, and of the Coharie, Choctaw, and Eastern Band Cherokee North American nations.