about.

My name is Shannon, and I’m publishing my first novel at the age of 55.  I earned my MFA at the age of 42, while living and working abroad and raising my family. At my core I am a teacher and a creative, who has spent my life teaching English literature and writing (27 years) around the world (US, Serbia, Brazil, Netherlands, Senegal) to middle and high school students, mostly in the International Baccalaureate system at international schools. I have also been a curriculum partner for the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam, promoting tolerance and acceptance.  In a nutshell I would say that helping young people find their voice and being of service has been my life's work.

Though I have spent my life helping teenagers with their own writing, I have tried twice, unsuccessfully, to complete my own novel, becoming distracted about 200 pages in. Last year I took a sabbatical from teaching and returned home to the U.S. from West Africa. As an ‘empty-nester' and 'educator-on-leave', with the world as my oyster, I actually entered a severe depression and feeling of being totally untethered for the first time in my life.  Liberation can be tricky to navigate sometimes.

As part of my personal therapy, I joined the Stanford creative writing community and became a student again. It was at this moment, that my novel (one that I had workshopped years prior with a filmmaker friend in Amsterdam) began to beckon to me again. It was through the process of writing it down that I began to feel well again — great actually — a healing practice that I had always taught to my students but had rarely done for myself. So I began to sit with my fingers on the keyboard and simply tried to listen to my inner voice. Sometimes I would sit for hours, just waiting. It was almost a meditation.

With time and their generosity, the women of the Delta Hotel began to 'speak' to me once again -- I am speaking here creatively -- and the story flowed out in a way that I had never experienced before -- easily, like exuberant rushing water. I worked every day, and after 10 months, had finished The Delta Hotel: a femme noir, my first completed novel.  Then in November the Presidential election occurred and I felt more than ever that the book needed to be read.  Had women really come that far or are we still dealing with the same glass ceiling and backstabbing bullshit? It is a question that we should continue to ask ourselves and one that I hope we will.

The Delta has been painstakingly researched and many of the secondary characters are based on real people  -- mostly women -- of that fateful and momentous time and place. I do hope that you enjoy it and that it sparks us to continue to talk about where we have been and where we are headed as women and as humanity.