Exploring Black and Native Identity with Shonda Buchanan

Join Cherekana and Janice for a conversation with award-winning poet, fiction, nonfiction writer and educator, Shonda Buchanan. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Oxfam Ambassador, USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow, and a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Department of Cultural Affairs Master Artist Fellow, Shonda Buchanan is the author of five books, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian.

Shonda has been a journalist for 25+ years, publishing in the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Indian Country Today, and The International Review of African American Art. President of Beyond Baroque Literary Art Center’s Board of Trustees, 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 “20 books to read”; to learn about institutional racism. Shonda is also the newest fiction faculty member in Alma College’s MFA Program. Writing on Tongva/Chumash land, Shonda is currently shopping her book of poetry about Nina Simone.

shondabuchanan.com