Amanda Grace Shu
Poet and writer.
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About Me
I am a poet and fiction writer, a lover of language and all its chaotic, inventive, and endlessly changing beauty. I believe that words can build worlds—both fantastical and familiar—and that creative writing is a powerfully empathetic act through which we humans come to truly understand one another.
I also obsess over cats and give my pens silly names like Stu-Pendous, Pentoum, and Penny Lane.
My poetry has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Mass Poetry’s Hard Work of Hope series, and Kaleidoscope. My fiction has been featured in Daily Science Fiction, and I am a graduate of the 2014 and 2015 Alpha Young Writers’ Workshop and the 2013 Juniper Institute for Young Writers.
Published Works & Awards
Pᴏᴇᴛʀʏ
Palette Poetry 2021 Emerging Poet Prize
Longlisted
July 2021
Ode to My Muscles
Kaleidoscope Magazine
September 2020
Ledger of Doubts, Unmasked
Mass Poetry’s The Hard Work of Hope series
June 2020
Minidoka to Austin
The American Journal of Poetry
January 2020
Do You Speak Chinese?
Commonthought, Lesley University
December 2019
Comprendre
Mass Poetry’s Poetry on the T Contest
Co-winner
May 2015
Azure
Smith College Poetry Prize for High School Girls
Semifinalist
March 2014
For Maya and Matilda
Mock Orange Magazine
November 2013
Fɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ
Reverse Orpheus
Commonthought, Lesley University
December 2019
Spacedad
Daily Science Fiction
March 2016
Barton Hollow
The Marble Collection
February 2013
Recent Posts
Longlisted for the Palette Poetry 2021 Emerging Poet Prize
Read more on their website. Congratulations to all the winners, finalists, and fellow longlisters!
Spacedad
Each time he comes home, his face changes. He is an old man at her birth, a youth at her third birthday party, and a fifty-something when he walks her to her first day of kindergarten. She hears the adults mutter about how Clare’s mother can’t keep a husband longer than a year, and Clare can barely suppress her giggles. You don’t get it. All those men—they’re all one husband.
She tells her second-grade class, My daddy is in space . . .
Ode to My Muscles
The words for you were hidden in your fibers,
buried in your tissue, emblazoned instructions
on every cell membrane to jerk, shake, whirl, and beat
to a rhythm of your own making,
as if I were meant to dance while still . . .
Aᴍᴀɴᴅᴀ Gʀᴀᴄᴇ Sʜᴜ © 2021
Amanda Grace Shu 