A Black trans woman with disabilities, Taiwana Shambley is an abolitionist fiction writer, teaching artist, and youth worker from St. Paul’s North End neighborhood and based in Minneapolis. Using black radical tradition and anger as a guide, she writes, teaches, and performs fiction to empower queer, trans, and disabled youth in the Twin Cities area. She is a 2023 Minnesota Colleges & Universities Write Like Us Mentor, and you might’ve seen her face on the cover of Minnesota Women’s Press. 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 has been recognized with the 2023 MISA Excellence in Teaching Fellowship and 2022 PEN/Faulkner Teaching Fellowship. She is currently at work on her debut novel, the first of a YA series, that explores the story of an angry and disabled girl who attempts to build an autonomous neighborhood and overthrow her mother, the first Black and first woman governor of Minnesota. Sign up for her mailing list below for updates on her writing, her forthcoming chapbook Norf and Other Angry Black Girl Beginnings, and book her for teaching and performances at the “Contact” tab.

Alongside her community-based creative writing performances, workshops, residencies, classes, & tutoring sessions, Taiwana works as a Early Childhood Special Education Teacher. Currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Antioch University Los Angeles’ low-residency program, she is a 2021 graduate of Augsburg University in English and African American Studies, where as part of a coalition of students, faculty, and staff she co-led the creation of the school’s first ethnic studies department. She’s held positions with Nexus Community Partners and the Legal Rights Center—the former as a Program Associate for the Open Road Fund, a $50 million community resource for Black wealth building, and the latter as the 2021-22 Lead Organizer and Creator of End Youth Prisons MN, an abolitionist campaign that uses storytelling to shift local discourse and policy—as well as with the Headwaters Foundation and Haymarket Books. She’s performed with TruArtSpeaks and MoreThanASingleStory (both are very close to her heart), the Guthrie, the Walker Art Center, Open Book, Steppingstone Theater, and the University of California, Los Angeles. She’s previously taught at PiM Arts High School, Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, Breakthrough Twin Cities, Maxfield Elementary School, and Murray Middle School.