Shanta Lee is also the author of the poetry collection, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, winner of the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize and the 2021 Vermont Book Award. Within this latest illustrated poetry collection, Black Metamorphoses (Etruscan Press, 2023) is a work that Shanta Lee describes as a 2,000+ year-old phone line opened to Ovid, as well as an interrogation of the Greek mythos, while creating her own new language in this work. Black Metamorphoses has been named a finalist in the 2021 Hudson prize, shortlisted for the 2021 Cowles Poetry Book Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Idaho poetry prize. Shanta Lee is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and the 2020 gubernatorial appointee to the Vermont Humanities Council’s board of directors. Her work within the humanities includes Shanta Lee giving lectures on the life of Lucy Terry Prince (c. 1730-1821) — considered the first known African-American poet in English literature — as a member of the Vermont and New Hampshire Humanities Council Speakers Bureaus. Shanta Lee also serves on the advisory for Jay Craven’s film, Lost Nation which prominently features the life of Lucy Terry Prince.
Shanta Lee’s professional wingspan covers the public health, arts, local government, non-profit and other sectors. Shanta Lee is a Vermont Public producer and reporter including her original series,“Seeing…the Unseen and In-Between within Vermont’s Landscape.” She is also a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine and Art New England. Her contributing work on several investigative journalism pieces for The Commons received a number of New England Newspaper & Press Association (NENPA) awards. Connected to Shanta Lee’s creative and professional practice is her collaborative work. Last July 2022 marked a special partnership with Epsilon Spires to co-create and co-create their first official multidisciplinary artist salon titled “Transcendence.” This salon series includes regional, national and international artists and is a collaboration that is continuing into 2023 and beyond.
