Ashanti Anderson / Ashanti Creates
You may know me as a poet, screenwriter, playright, analog game designer, aspiring filmmaker, essayist, great cook, novice gardener, slow hiker, teacher, development director, or decent human. Or, you might not know me at all. Either way, hello!
This website is dedicated to my creations as well as my advancement in thinking about the world. Most of my completed work centers Black history and/or the Black experience, and I'm also concerned with food justice, ecology, mental health, health equity, radical love, and healing justice. I document how these interests show up in my art and daily practice on Instagram @ashanticreates.
Bio: Ashanti Anderson (she/her) is a Black Queer Disabled poet, screenwriter, and playwright. Her debut short poetry collection, Black Under, is the winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today, POETRY magazine, and elsewhere in print and on the web. Learn more about Ashanti’s previous & latest shenanigans at ashanticreates.com.
For bookings/speaking engagements, please contact: Coriolis Company
Cover Art: "Untitled" by Mariah Quintanilla. Instagram: @mariah_quintanilla
BLACK UNDER
Poems by Ashanti Anderson
Black River Chapbook Competition Winner
Black Under layers outward perception with internal truth to offer an almost-telescopic examination of the redundancies—and incongruences—of marginalization and hypervisibility. Anderson torques the contradictions of oppression, giving her speakers the breathing room to discover their own agency. In these pages, declarations are reclamations, and joy is not an aspiration but a birthright.
Read reviews of Black Under in Tupelo Quarterly and MADDBLACKREADS.
WRITING (SELECTED)
ESSAYS
Deep Nostalgia (audio available)
Kick a**—and look good while doing it.
Help your neighbor (without calling the police).
FILMS & PLAYS
Study Room (2018)
Credit: Writer
Winner of the 2018 Haley's Flight Page to Screen Short Film Competition
A young woman races against the clock to finish her term paper on time while being harassed by annoying classmates.
Bleak Magic (2021)
Credit: Writer
When a conjure woman perfects a potion for “Black power,” she uncovers the nefarious desires of her clients.
