Ashanti Anderson
Photo courtesy of Ashanti Anderson
Bio
Ashanti Anderson is a Black, queer, disabled poet, screenwriter, and playwright. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Anderson’s poems have appeared in World Literature Today, POETRY, and elsewhere in print and on the web. Their debut short poetry collection, Black Under, is the winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. In 2018, Anderson’s short film script, Study Room, was produced by Haley’s Flight, LLC. In 2021, their one-act play, Bleak Magic, was produced by Blacklight Arts Collective (dir. by Leelee Jackson). Anderson currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
I consider myself early in my career—there’s still so much I want to write. But life (I really mean work) gets in the way. I [over]work in the nonprofit sector currently. Writing becomes a matter of showing up, but that can be challenging when it doesn’t put food on the table. I am thankful for the writing communities to which I belong for holding space for me to show up in true form. Also, I am grateful for the recognition of the National Endowment for the Arts, which will make it possible for me to show up to my work in new ways: to chase poetry as it wisps past, to search for it down rabbit holes and across stretches of time.