Artist and Author Shanta Lee Gander

This week’s Writer Wednesday features Shanta Lee Gander of Brattleboro, Vermont! Shanta Lee is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and was 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" (June, 2021).

Along with Detroit poet Brea Liggons, Shanta Lee will be leading a virtual workshop, “Writing Our Lives in Verse and Prose” on Nov. 13, 2021 at noon. Read more about the workshop and Shanta Lee below!

What do you have in store for your workshop with us on Nov. 13?

The Nov. 13 workshop is a collaboration with Brea Liggons, and we are going to be talking about the route and pathway for telling your own stories through verse and prose. In addition to including time for individuals to create work, we want to also focus on some key questions that often get in the way of creating such as what does telling one’s story look like? What does it feel like to have a sense of permission to create this kind of work? How does one begin to think about the layer of potential rejection as it relates to telling one’s story?

What is your favorite part of the writing process?

My favorite part of the writing process is noticing how a work grows with time and space.  I think it is interesting to look back at a poem or a prose piece I’ve done and see the different iterations of it through the revision process. And for me, a part of the revision process is giving the piece space and time away from me so that I can look at it objectively.

What does your writing workspace look like?

For me, workspaces for creating have different facets that are internal and external. Externally, I mostly do my work at an antique walnut secretary which I adore. And there is also my internal workspace which often feels like I am driving a stick shift with the different gears representing the different projects or modes of creating that I do. And if I were to describe that, well that looks like a freeway — not always driving in the fast lane though!

What is your favorite non-writing hobby?

It’s funny, I don’t think I really have hobbies because a lot of what I do relates to my art practice.  So, may I call them my other interests? I am a super huge fan of horror, and it is a fascinating genre for what it expresses about social anxieties, fears, etc.

What is your favorite piece of writing advice?

I have been in a poetry group for a year, meeting online since the pandemic started, and during one of the meetings online, someone said, “Poems have their own rights.” It was something that came up within the flow of the conversation and I never forgot it. And it is true. I now look at a lot of things I do and ask myself, “Am I trying to impose my will on this thing  — whether it is a photograph or piece of writing, or something else — I created?” It keeps me humble and also makes space for the work itself.

What writing projects are you currently working on?

I am mostly done with my memoir, working on my third poetry manuscript, and currently trying to stay with the project I started a year ago with my ongoing noticing/experiencing of this new landscape of COVID.  I’ve been a lifelong journaler, but this is something that is different in terms of the witnessing and tying it into other things across life and pop culture.

Follow Shanta on Instagram at @Mz.shanta_lee and Twitter at @ShantaLeeG. To see her photography and writing, visit shantaleegander.com.