Shanna Germain

First and foremost, she is a leximaven of the highest order, exploring her love of the written word through a multitude of formats and styles. Shanna (pronounced like ‘Shaun’ with a sigh of pleasure at the end) also claims the titles of (in no particular order): girl geek, lust/slut, wanderlust-er, avid walker and biker, tree kisser, knife licker, steak-maker, book-nerd and Schrodinger’s Brat.

With a whole lot of writing years under her belt (or her collar, depending on the day), Shanna’s poems, essays, short stories, novellas, articles and more have found homes in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, books and websites.

An Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute in Portland, OR, she has taught classes in writing, publishing, media and photography at a wide variety of places. She’s even garnered an award here and there, including a Pushcart nomination, the Rauxa Prize for Erotic Poetry and the C. Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship. She keeps her ego in a tiny glass jar and feeds it drops of sea water and baby crickets so that it will never outgrow its cage.

Raised in upstate New York, Shanna spent her quarter-life crisis years in Portland, Ore. Her writing travels have taken her to places like Amsterdam, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Italy and Nicaragua. After a year-long jaunt on a wild island off the coast of Scotland, she has returned to the rain-washed streets of Portland, which she considers her forever home.