Taiwana Shambley

A Black transgender woman with disabilities, Taiwana Shambley is an abolitionist fiction writer & teaching artist based in Minneapolis. She writes, teaches, performs, and shifts stories to empower marginalized youth in Minnesota. A Sunspot Literary Journal semi-finalist, her fiction has been recognized with grants from the Loft Literary Center, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and her work as an educator was honored with the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Teaching Fellowship. Author of the zine One Good Argument for Youth Prison Abolition, her writing is published by the Minnesota Women’s Press, Belt Publishing, and the Academy of American Poets. She is also an MFA student at Warren Wilson College and teaches English Language Arts full time at PiM Arts High School. Feel free to book her for community-based performances, workshops, classes, & residencies or to subscribe to updates on her first novel at taiwanashambley.com.