Shonda Buchanan is an award-winning poet, fiction, nonfiction writer and educator. A journalist for 25+ years, published in the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today, and The International Review of African American Art, Buchanan was 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, Buchanan’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. Her memoir, Black Indian begins the saga of her family’s migration stories of Free People of Color communities exploring identity, ethnicity, landscape and loss. An international lecturer and workshop leader, Shonda received an MFA from Antioch University, a BA and MA in English from Loyola Marymount University where she teaches. Buchanan lives on Tongva and Chumash land in Los Angeles.