Shannon Nakai

Shannon Nakai serves as a contributing editor for The Cortland Review, a regular reviewer for Heavy Feather Review and The Colorado Review, and was the senior reviews editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Her reviews have also appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Literary Review, Green Mountains Review, and PANK. She also considers unsolicited queries.

Her poetry and prose are featured in The Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review, Atlanta Review, Midwest Review, Image, The Cimarron Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, Alternating Current, and elsewhere. She was a nominee for a Pushcart Prize in 2020 and the AWP Intro Poetry Prize in 2016 and a finalist in contests held by The Midwest Review and The Atlanta Review.

Professional Bio

Shannon Nakai earned a TESOL certificate as part of her B.A. in English at Greenville University, where she also tutored French and wrote a thesis on contemporary Afghan literature. She studied Modern Literature and Poetry as a visiting scholar at Oxford University. Following graduation, Shannon won a teaching Fulbright at the Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University in Turkey. In the US, she worked with Eifrig Publishing as a copyeditor intern.

Shannon holds an MFA in Creative Writing in Poetry from Wichita State University, where she also designed and taught various courses in literature and writing. Other hats she has worn at WSU include the McNair Scholars research coordinator, Upward Bound TRIO English instructor, Dzanc Books copyeditor intern, student-elected representative of Sigma Tau Delta international English honors society, and university symphony violinist. She also taught literature and composition courses at Friends University in Wichita.

In 2022 Shannon enrolled in Villanova University's Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies and Training in Advocacy to become a Department of Justice fully accredited representative for migrants and asylum seekers. She currently works as a legal assistant for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), where she also volunteered as an ESL instructor. Her goal is to apply for accreditation with the Department of Justice in 2023. In her free time she plays music with her husband and kids, drinks tea with friends, and studies Spanish.