Shanta Lee Gander (poetry, prose, journalism, photography) was our guest on Episode 5 of Season 2 of Black Writers Read, which originally aired on April 10, 2022 during National Poetry Month.
Shanta Lee Gander is a photographer, writer across genres and is a public intellectual whose work has been widely featured. She is the author of GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, the winner of the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize with an honorable mention from the Sheila Margaret Motton prize, and reviews featured in the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books, Seven Days, the Kenyon Review, and the The Adroit Journal. Her forthcoming collection, Black Metamorphoses (Etruscan Press, 2023), is what Shanta Lee describes as a 2000+ year old phone line opened to Ovid as well as an interrogation of the Greek mythos while creating her own new language in this work. Black Metamorphoses is an illustrated poetry collection that has been longlisted for the 2021 Idaho poetry prize, shortlisted for the 2021 Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and named a finalist in the 2021 Hudson prize.
In addition to teaching a Media Studies course at The Putney School, Shanta Lee is one of the writers for the Ms. Magazine Blog, a regular contributor to Art New England and is a producer and reporter for Vermont Public Radio. Her major exhibition, Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine, was on exhibit at the Fleming Museum of Art at the time of our conversation. This exhibition started off as an initial idea and inquiry: Who or what is the Goddess when she is allowed to misbehave?
During the episode, Shanta Lee read an excerpt from GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues.
To learn more about her visual art and written work, visit: Shantaleegander.com.
Find Shanta Lee on Instagram: @mz.shanta_lee
