Shonda Buchanan

Biography

Shonda Buchanan has deep roots at Loyola Marymount University, having received both her B.A. and M.A. in English with a Creative Writing emphasis in the Department of English. A Writing Instructor since 2018, Shonda started teaching Freshmen Rhetoric, Composition and Creative Writing at LMU in 2001 as a Teaching Fellow. She is also a founding board member of the African American Alumni Association. After 13 years teaching and chairing the English & Foreign Languages Department at Hampton University, and serving as a Writer-in-Residence at William & Mary College’s Creative Writing Program, Shonda is grateful to return to her alma mater as a member of the inaugural Composition Instructors Cohort for FYS.

Author of five books, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, Shonda was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a daughter of Mixed Bloods, tri-racial and tri-ethnic African American, American Indian and European-descendant families who migrated from North Carolina and Virginia in the mid-1700 to 1800s to Southwestern Michigan. Black Indian, which won the Indie New Generation Book Award for Memoir, begins the saga of these migration stories of Free People of Color communities exploring identity, ethnicity, landscape and loss. Her 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. Shonda’s poetry and essays have been featured in numerous anthologies such as The Seventh Wave, Urban Voices: 51 Poems from 51 American Poets, Silver Birch Press, Art Meets Literature: An Undying Love Affair, A Def Poetry Jam, Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, Geography of Rage: Remember the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, and Catch the Fire!!! A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry, Rivendale, WhatFreshWitchIsThis?, and LongStoryShort.