Kalamazoo, Michigan native Shonda Buchanan is a twice Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominee, Oxfam Ambassador & a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and PEN America Mentor. A professor in the Department of English at Western Michigan University & Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Shonda is the author of three collections of poetry: Who’s Afraid of Black Indians?, Equipoise, Poems from Goddess Country and the forthcoming, The Lost Songs of Nina Simone, as well as the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism.” Former Board President for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center and Board member of the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival and the Kalamazoo Arts Council, Shonda has published in The Mississippi Review, the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today, Red Ink Journal, LA Parents Magazine and the International Review of African American Art.