Author: Shanta Lee Gander

Shanta Lee Gander is an artist and multi-faceted professional. As an artist, her endeavors include writing and photography with work that has been featured in PRISM, ITERANT Literary Magazine, Palette Poetry, BLAVITY, DAME Magazine, The Crisis Magazine, Rebelle Society and on a former radio segment Ponder This. Shanta Lee’s photojournalism has been featured on Vermont Public Radio (VPR.orgExample) and her investigative reporting has been in The Commons weekly newspaper covering Windham County, VT. Shanta Lee is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and 2020 and named as Diode Editions full-length book contest winner for her debut poetry compilation, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues. Her contributing work on an investigative journalism piece for The Commons received a New England Newspaper & Press Association (NENPA) 2019 award. Shanta Lee gives lectures on the life of Lucy Terry Prince, considered the first known African-American poet in English literature, as a member of the Vermont Humanities Council Speakers Bureau and is the 2020 gubernatorial appointee to their board of directors. Her latest photography exhibition, "Dark Goddess," explores other aspects of the goddess and has just been awarded a solo show at the Southern Vermont Arts Center. Shanta Lee is an MFA candidate in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College. Currently, Shanta Lee Gander offers virtual creativepreneurship workshops to writers and other artists connecting them to strategies around project planning, grant writing, and other topics as a part of her Obsidian Arts, L3C. To see more of Shanta Lee’s work, visit Shantaleegander.com.
How Intersectional Poetry Can Inspire Young Girls To Be Themselves

Q&A: How Intersectional Poetry Can Inspire Young Girls To Be Themselves

Ms. writer Shanta Lee Gander recently talked with Diana Whitney about the ways her poetry anthology “You Don’t Have to Be Everything” encourages non-binary, trans and cis-gendered girls to bravely and boldly be themselves.

“Poetry is having a moment right now, and I hope it’s not just a moment. We turn to poetry in times of emotional need, and in times of collective crisis.”

What We Must Learn from Lucy Terry Prince

This is the story of a freed landowning slave woman from the 1700’s that has become an ever-more-timely instruction for all of us about the power of voice, the human imperative to witness and the reminder that we all must address injustice even when the stakes are high.

My Hair, My Self

A few weeks ago, I went with my friend Stacey to pick up her daughter from school. As my friend’s daughter, Elizabeth, and two of her friends, Sarah and Lydia, […]