SHANN RAY is a poet and prose writer whose debut collection of stories, AMERICAN MASCULINE, was selected for the Bakeless Prize and appears with Graywolf Press. He is also the author of Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity (Rowman & Littlefield), has served as a research psychologist for the Centers for Disease Control and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities. His stories and poems have appeared in McSweeney’s, StoryQuarterly, Northwest Review, Narrative, and Poetry International among other venues. Ray, who writes in honor of his mother Saundra Rae, was part of a family basketball dynasty in Montana and now lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane, Washington where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University. www.shannray.com
For the love and the fire. When we genuinely enter the crucible of human existence, with all of its consolation and desolation, I believe we find the grace and the vital beauty of a life lived for others.
Martin Luther King Jr, Strength to Love; the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sandra Alcosser, Mary Oliver, Louise Gluck, Elizabeth Alexander, C. K. Williams, Gabriella Mistral, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. The prose of bell hooks, Paulo Friere, Richard Ford, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, James Welch, Richard Hugo, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Alice Walker, N. Scott Momaday, A.B. Guthrie, Wallace Stegner, Jim Harrison, Sherman Alexie, Marilynne Robinson, and Michael Bahktin. Great books: Les Miserables, War and Peace, House Made of Dawn, War Dances, Gilead, Rock Springs, House of Light, Fools Crow, and All About Love.
Shann, thanks for your recent comments on my 3 Short Shorts. Your words are such gems, and I treasure them, and you.
Hi Shann, so glad to welcome you to Fictionaut!
Welcome, Shann!
Shann, thanks for your recent comments on my 3 Short Shorts. Your words are such gems, and I treasure them, and you.
Hi Shann, so glad to welcome you to Fictionaut!
Welcome, Shann!