Open my mouth, look, and read
what I ate, or, sometimes
what I hungered for.
Sweetness, rotten
gaps, bits
gnawed and worn down to the root
charred bread and mistletoe, bits
of his hand
bit-back words, here
lodged in the throat.
From Session - Pedestal Magazine, October 2010
Shannon Connor Winward is an American author of literary and speculative writing. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in Stupefying Stories, Spinetingler Magazine, Scigentasy, Flash Fiction Online, Plasma Frequency Magazine, PANK, and The Vestal Review, as well as in genre anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. Her poetry appears widely in such venues as Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons, Fairy Tale Magazine, Literary Mama, Hip Mama, Star*Line, Illumen, Ideomancer, and Dreamstreets, and in the SFPA’s 2012 Rhysling Anthology of Rhysling Award nominees.
A Semi-Finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest and a Rhysling-Award nominee, Shannon was also runner-up for an emerging artist fellowship in literature by the Delaware Division of the Arts in 2014 and 2015. Her debut poetry chapbook, UNDOING WINTER (Finishing Line Press), was released in July, 2014.
Shannon lives and writes in Newark, Delaware.