Shann Ray

Professor of Leadership Studies | Gonzaga University

Shann Ray teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University and poetry at Stanford University. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he has served as a visiting scholar in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and as a poetry mentor for the PEN America Prison and Justice Writers Program. Having collaborated with painter Makoto Fujimura on a United Nations grant entitled Intercultural Dialogues through Beauty as a Language of Peace, Ray is an American Book Award winner, three-time High Plains Book Award winner, Bread Loaf Fellow, and Bakeless Prize winner. His work includes Atomic Theory 7, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity, American Masculine, Sweetclover, Blood Fire Vapor Smoke, and The Souls of Others. His poems and prose have been featured in Poetry, Esquire, Narrative, McSweeney’s, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Big Sky Journal, and the American Journal of Poetry. Find more on Shann here.