An award-winning poet, fiction, nonfiction writer and educator, 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. Shonda is also a Sundance Institute Writing Arts fellow, a PEN Center Emerging Voices fellow and a Jentel Artist Residency fellow. Finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review poetry contest, Shonda’s 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. About to enter a 3rd printing, Black Indian begins the saga of her family’s migration stories of Free People of Color communities exploring identity, ethnicity, landscape and loss. Her 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.
An educator and a journalist for over 25 years, Shonda has freelanced for many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, and many more.
A former board member of the Poetry Society of Virginia and Hampton Roads Writers, and founding board member of the African American Alumni Association at Loyola Marymount University, Shonda is the President of the Board of Trustees for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. An Education Specialist for the U.S. Department of State, a national and international lecturer and workshop leader, Shonda received an MFA from Antioch University and a MA and BA in English from Loyola Marymount University where she currently teaches.
In addition to her work as a literary activist, a teaching artist and a mentor for young writers, she has previously taught at Hampton University, William & Mary College (Writer-in-Residence), Cal State Northridge and Mt. San Antonio College. Descendant of African nations, the Coharie, Choctaw and Eastern Band Cherokee, and Europeans, Shonda lives and writes in her adopted home on Tongva and Chumash land in Los Angeles, California.
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