Shayla Hawkins

Author's Bio

"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering." ~ Robert Frost

Publications and Prizes

Anthologies:

Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse (Moonrise Press, 2010), Vwa: Poems for Haiti (Create Space, 2010), Mona Poetica (Mayapple Press, 2005), Role Call (Third World Press, 2002)

Journals:

African Voices, Afterthoughts, Ancient Paths, Aunt Chloe, Calabash, Caribbean Writer, Driftwood Review, Drumvoices Revue, Graffiti Rag, Magnapoets, Maxis Review, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, Paris/Atlantic, Pembroke Magazine, Pyrta, Reverie: Midwest African American Literature, Solo Cafe, St. Somewhere, Taj Mahal Review, The Ambassador Poetry Project, Tidal Basin Review, Tongues of the Ocean, Torch: Poetry, Prose, and Short Stories by African American Women, Windsor Review, Yemassee

Prizes:

The Caribbean Writer Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for Short Fiction; Winner: The John Edgar Wideman Microstory Contest

Personal Favorites

What I'm Reading Now:

Stealing Mona Lisa by Carson Morton, Quiet by Susan Cain, Sensual Love Poems by Kathleen Blease, ed., Everything On It by Shel Silverstein

Favorite Books:

The Bible, Like Water for Chocolate, Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry, Of Love and Other Demons, Middle Passage, Nectar from a Stone, Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire, The Dress Lodger, The Farming of Bones, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Finding Nouf, Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, Wide Sargasso Sea, Soulcatcher and Other Stories, Song of Solomon, Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, The Pearl, Five Quarters of the Orange, Mama Day, The Red Tent, To Kill a Mockingbird, Sarah, The Chin Kiss King, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen, Collected Poems: Robert Hayden, The Seasons of Beento Blackbird, Girl With a Pearl Earring, The Inferno, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Pope Joan, 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die, etc., etc., etc....

Favorite Authors:

Laura Esquivel, Zora Neale Hurston, Edwidge Danticat, Daphne Du Maurier, Pablo Neruda, Charles Johnson, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Langston Hughes, the Bronte sisters (especially Emily), Christina Rossetti, Wislawa Szymborska, Robert Hayden, Toni Morrison, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Keats, Countee Cullen, Dante, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Herbert, Ellen Conford, O. Henry, Beverly Cleary, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ruth Downie, Jean Rhys, Khalil Gibran, Carolyn Keene, Zoe Ferraris, John Donne

Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the writers listed in it.
Listing last updated: January 17, 2012

More Information

Listed as:

Poet

Gives readings?

Yes

Travels for readings?

Yes

Identifies as:

Christian

Fluent in:

French