POET. PAINTER. ART EDUCATOR.
Poet, Painter and Art Educator, Shanna T. Melton, is the author of Unraveling My Thoughts (2016) and founder of The Writer’s Group with Shanna T. Melton, one of the most diverse writing groups in Connecticut. Her recent exhibition of paintings, Her Dragons Fly, braid ancestral lineage, African textiles, and Black history with dazzling color and visual storytelling. Honored as a Connecticut Art Hero by the CT Office of the Arts (2018) and awarded the Arts and Cultural Empowerment Award by the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County, Shanna is also an arts consultant and teaching artist who integrates social justice and community engagement in the creative workshops, performances, and events that she curates.
An Ambassador of Poetry for The Housatonic Museum of Art, Shanna has brought her poetry to the stage from the Nuyorican Poets Café (NYC) to the Apache Poets Café (Atlanta) to Lyrical Voices (Bridgeport), which she founded as an inclusive space to showcase emerging poets. You can also find Shanna's poetry anthologized in The Looking Glass Anthology: Through the Single Gal's Lens, Poetree Publications, 2019. She is currently working on her next poetry collection, which focus on relationships, community, and history.
Shanna was a Historical Preservationist and Art Ambassador for The Mary & Eliza Freeman Center for History and Community. Her artwork has been exhibited most recently at the Barnum Museum, the Charter Oak Cultural Center, City Light Gallery, Long Wharf Theater, and the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale University. Her paintings have also been published in African Voices Magazine, Dogwood Poetry Journal from Fairfield University, and featured in Time: The Kalief Browder Story, a Netflix documentary produced by Jay Z.
In 2021, the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence and Connecticut Office of the Arts certified Shanna in teaching Dr. Martin Luther King’s Six Principles of Nonviolence as an Art Educator. In 2022, Shanna joined the roster of Teaching Artists with Arts For Learning CT and HOT Schools. Along with teaching generative writing workshops for The Writer’s Group with Shanna T. Melton, she teaches visual art classes for K-12 and adult learners, and also presents artist talks that integrate art, poetry, and cultural history.