The Business of Poetry, a One-Part Workshop

Workshop Description:

This practical workshop, facilitated by Shonda Buchanan, helps writers navigate the professional side of their creative practice, with a focus on preparing strong bios, cover letters, and submissions. Participants will learn how to present themselves and their work effectively, identify submission opportunities, and leave with tools they can use when submitting to publications, grants, residencies, and other opportunities.

Shonda Buchanan Bio:

Kalamazoo, Michigan native Shonda Buchanan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Western Michigan University and Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Three-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Shonda is an Oxfam Ambassador, a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and a PEN America Mentor. Author of the award-winning amemoir, Black Indian and The Lost Songs of Nina Simone (2026 winner of the Black Caucus American Library Association Poetry Book Award), Shonda’s other books include Who’s Afraid of Black Indians? and Equipoise: Poems from Goddess Country and two poetry anthologies. President of the Michigan Poetry Society, Shonda is the former Board President for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, current Board member of the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival and the Kalamazoo Arts Council. Shonda has published in and/or written for Poetry Daily, The Mississippi Review, Tab Journal, Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, LA Times Magazine, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today and Red Ink Journal. Shonda is shopping a second memoir and a book of poems about growing up in Kalamazoo. For more information, follow Shonda on Instagram @shondabuchanan or visit www.shondabuchanan.com.