BLACK UNDER

Winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition

Cover Art by Mariah Quintanilla

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Black Under layers outward perception with internal truth to offer an almost-telescopic examination of the redundancies—and incongruences—of marginalization and hypervisibility... In these pages, declarations are reclamations, and joy is not an aspiration but a birthright.

Praise for Black Under:

"Black Under defies strict categorization, save for the fact that it is altogether excellent."
—Marcus Wicker, author of Silencer and Maybe the Saddest Thing"Witness Anderson's haunting and marvelous skill."
—Kay Ulanday Barrett, cultural strategist and author of More Than Organs a 2021 Stonewall Honor Award Book"I’ve read these poems again and again, and every time I leave like—it’s we time.
—Sara Borjas, author of Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff

Publications & Productions

Poetry

My Ancestors Who Learned to Read by Staring at the Bible, in Limp Wrist
sister, pick which battle to win when you choose to lose the war, in The Rumpus
Deep Nostalgia, in Container Magazine
Slave Ship Haibun; Acrostic for my Last Breaths, in Jet Fuel Review
Self-Portrait in Blackface; Self-Portrait as Overseer; Resignation, in Tupelo Quarterly
Self-Portrait as Kendrick Lamar, Laughing to the Bank, in Poetry
If, in World Literature Today
Ode to Black Skin, in Poetry (audio available)
Cleaning Up Men's Messes; Mamie Till on Carolyn Bryant's Confession, in Foothill Journal
Goddam, in Really System
Teach Me to Float, in Panoply

Essay

Deep Nostalgia, in Container Magazine

Academic Research

Eskine, K. E., Anderson, A.E., Sullivan, M., and Golob, E. J., (2018). Effects of music listening on creative cognition and semantic memory retrieval. Psychology of Music, 48(4), 513-528.Anderson, A. E. (2014). College Students’ Perceptions of Various Types of Domestic Violence. XULAneXUS: Xavier University of Louisiana’s Undergraduate Research Journal, 11(1), 43-52.

Stage & Screen

Study Room (2018)
Short Film | Credit: Writer
Winner of the 2018 Haley's Flight Page-to-Screen Short Film CompetitionA young woman races against the clock to finish her term paper on time while being harassed by annoying classmates.

Bleak Magic (2021)
One Act Play | Credit: Writer

When a conjure woman perfects a potion for "Black Power", she uncovers the nefarious desires of her clients.

Games

Visit itch.io (external site)

Author Bio

Ashanti "Shan" Anderson (he/him) is a Black Queer Disabled writer, 2023 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and psychotherapist. Shan is the author of Black Under, which won the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Shan's poems have appeared in POETRY, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. His other published and produced works include research, essays, stage plays, screenplays, and tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs). Shan currently lives in Philadelphia.

Privacy Policy

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talktoshan [at] protonmail [dot] com