Name: Shayla Lawson
Genre: Poetry, Non-Fiction
Notable Works: How to Live Free in A Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir, I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean, This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope
Website: www.shaylalawson.com
Image provided by author
[ID: Photograph of a black person against a light grey background. They are smiling widely and looking off to the left side of the image. They have long brown hair, with a small thick strand resting on their right shoulder. They are wearing a deep v-neck, navy blue blouse and large circular golden earrings with an unidentifiable shape in the centre. /end]
About the Author:
Described by Washington Blade as “the Joan Didion of our time” – Lawson is an accomplished poet, journalist and essayist, and the current Writer in Residence at Amherst College, having succeeded Daniel Hall in the academic year 2018-2019. Their work has been widely praised and recognised, with their book This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope being a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography. Lawson’s work has also been recognised by the LAMBDA Literary Awards, the MacDowell Artists Colony, and Yaddo.
Lawson’s latest memoir, How to Live Free in A Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir, is written through essays and took 9 years to publish. It focuses on their experiences travelling the world, falling in love, marrying, divorcing, embracing the black community, discovering “beauty and sexuality”, and experiencing and dealing with ableism. They were diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome at the age of 39, and parts of their memoir look at how they have experienced ableism since then and the impact it has had on both their life and love for travel. Rachel Leon, whilst interviewing Lawson for the Chicago Review of Books, notes Lawson’s “commitment to being vulnerable on page” and the added layer of vulnerability that seems to permeate their latest work.
More reviews regarding their work, as well as press and radio appearances, can be found here.
Information on their journalism and publications can be found here.
List of Works:
Books:
Name: A Speed Education in Human Being
Published: 2013
Publisher: Sawyer House
Name: Pantone
Published: 2016
Publisher: Miel
Name: I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean
Published: 2018
Publisher: Saturnalia Books
Name: This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope
Published: 2020
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Name: How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir
Published: 2024
Publisher: Tiny Reparations Books
Contributed to:
Name: Unchaste Anthology: Volume Two
Published: 2017
Publisher: Unchaste Press
Author(s): Jenny Forrester (editor), Multiple Contributors
Name: Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets
Published: 2018
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Author(s): Bianca Lynne Spriggs (Editor, Contributor), Frank X. Walker (Editor, Contributor), Jeremy Paden (Editor, Contributor), Shauna M. Morgan (Preface), Multiple Contributors
Name: Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry
Published: 2019
Publisher: TriQuarterley
Author(s): Joanne V. Gabbin (Editor), Lauren K. Alleyne (Editor), Rita Dove (Foreword), Multiple Contributors
Name: Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic
Published: 2022
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Author(S): Eliza Smith (Editor), Haley Swanson (Editor), Multiple Contributors
Written For:
- Bustle
- Romper
- Salon
- Tin House
- PAPER
- ESPN
- Salon
- Guernica
- Vulture
- The Cut
- New York Magazine
Archivist Comments:
I said it in the entry for How to Live Free in a Dangerous World, but I honestly admire anyone who can A.) successfully write travel writing and B.) make a whole book out of it. And yes yes, I know it’s not just travel writing, but that is not the point. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Lawson’s writing and would like to extend my thanks to them for agreeing to be a part of this project.
The Disability Book Archive 
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