Beyond Baroque: (Still) Breaking Barriers in Literary L.A.
By Shonda Buchanan
FROM: Angels Flight Literary West
In the wake of the pandemic, arts organizations have been hard hit, including stalwarts like L.A.’s Beyond Baroque. A conversation between new Executive Director Quentin Ring and new board Vice-President Shonda Buchanan on how the literary home has survived in the age of Covid-19 and continued to break barriers for creatives in L.A., including offering a prize for young writers in honor of inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, who is a part of the Beyond Baroque family.
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Award-winning poet Shonda Buchanan honors multiple literary traditions in her breathtaking new memoir, Black Indian. An educator, freelance writer, and literary editor, Buchanan is a culture worker with deep, decades-long engagement in communities of color. Her work honors the complexity and diversity of these Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. At once Indigenous, Black Female, Speculative, Feminist, Womanist, Urban, Southern Gothic, and counter to the Tragic Mulatto stereotype in American literature, stage, and film, Black Indian is a quintessentially American narrative.
Literary editor of of Los Ángeles based Harriet Tubman Press, Shonda Buchanan announced the release of her next book Black Indian: A Memoir, will be released by Wayne State Press in August. She is also an award-winning poet and educator. She is the author of Who’s Afraid of Black Indians? and Equipoise: Poems from Goddess Country and editor of two anthologies, Voices from Leimert Park and Voices from Leimert Park Redux.