Renee H. Shea

Renee H. Shea, formerly professor of English and modern languages at Bowie State University in Maryland, has published extensively on contemporary authors, including Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Monique Truong, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rita Dove, Tracy K. Smith, Arundhati Roy, Lan Cao, and Nathalie Handal. Her most current work is a profile of Imbolo Mbue in Poets & Writers magazine (March/April 2021). An English language arts consultant to public school districts, she writes textbooks for Bedford, Freeman & Worth. Her most recent are American Literature and Rhetoric (2021) and Literature and Composition, 3rd ed. (2022).

“Everything alive aches for more”: A Conversation with Kari Gunter-Seymour, Poet Laureate of Ohio

October 7, 2021 | Renee H. Shea

Photo by Kari Gunter-Seymour / www.karigunterseymourpoet.com Kari Gunter-Seymour (b. 1955) is having a moment—soon to become two years of moments since she was appointed in June...
“Two Beings Entwined”: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of Conflict and Healing

September 14, 2020 | Renee H. Shea

Harlan Margaret Van Cao and Lan Cao / Courtesy of Penguin Random House Family in Six Tones: A Refugee Mother, an American Daughter (Viking, 2020) is a memoir written in alternating...
“Between the Facts”: A Conversation with Monique Truong

September 17, 2019 | Renee H. Shea

Monique Truong / Photo © Haruka Sakaguchi Monique Truong, who came to the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam, began exploring untold and ignored histories in her first novel,...
“Suffering Memory”: The Unseen Worlds of Marilène Phipps

February 28, 2019 | Renee H. Shea

Marilène Phipps, Roots, 13 x 18 in., oil on linen canvas / Courtesy of the artist Whether she is a writer who paints or a painter who writes, Marilène Phipps combines the two gifts with a rare...
“Stretching the Limits of Silence”: Witness and Resistance in Edwidge Danticat’s Nonfiction

Winter 2019
Renee H. Shea

Photo: Parth Upadhyay/Unsplash Reflecting back over Edwidge Danticat’s nonfiction, Renee H. Shea finds much to be grateful for in Danticat’s extension of her personal stories into political and...
Poet, Radiologist, and 007 Wannabe: A Conversation with Amit Majmudar, Ohio’s First Poet Laureate

August 22, 2016 | Renee H. Shea

A diagnostic nuclear radiologist, Amit Majmudar was named the first poet laureate of Ohio (2015–2017). He has published three books of poetry, including 0˚, 0˚ (2009), which was a finalist f...