Writer
When I travel across Indian Country (USA), and internationally, I always have my eye on human exchanges and engagements, even as I try to check my Americaness, or my own biases, at the cultural door. Never in my life did I think I’d live during a plague — COVID-19 — and have the beautiful, scary burden of finding language to say “it”: to say what we are all thinking. Yet writing is my vocation. My calling. I could not escape this job any less than Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, or Basho could escape it. In fact, I still question if I chose to be a writer or if writing chose me. I’ll never know.
For the last 30 years, I’ve written poems, short fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, screenplays, and grant proposals. My writing spans the gamut because I believe every medium allows you to tell a great story. I’ve also been a journalist since my internship at the LA Weekly in 1992 turned into a freelance job. I was 24 years old. If you need help writing or editing a book or an article, or if you’d like me to an article or record a story for your media outlet, click here. If you’d like help telling your heritage story or researching your family genealogy, click here. I’d like to help your story come alive! If you need a book review, interview, and profile, click here.
Tips for Budding Writers
Q: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
A: My advice for young and older writers remains constant — try to write every day. Try to write the truth of your own life first. Try to be as authentic as possible in your language and your vision for your poem. Don’t be easy on yourself. Don’t let flat images or shallow language or explicit words alone express your feelings. Try to find the image of the idea or a thought for the emotion that hasn’t been expressed before in that particular way that you see yourself it or heard it. Tell the truth the way that you see it, as beautiful or as ugly as you see it. Tell your story. Tell the truth.
Select Articles by Shonda:
- Sisters of AARP
- Zora/Medium
- LA Weekly
- Daily Press
- Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2e
- Indian Country Today
For Articles About Shonda, click here.