Shawntai Brown is a Detroit writer and teaching artist. Her work centers on empowering communities through experiences that educate, challenge and entertain. As a playwright, she is interested in the dialogue between script, actors, directors and audience, and how that informs and reshapes communities, especially concerning queer people of color. She has birthed more that two dozen short and full-length plays.
Shawntai has a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing from Western Michigan University and a Master of Arts in Literacy Learning from Marygrove College. You can find her poetry in Kaleidoscope, Cactus Heart, and Synaesthesia Magazine. She serves as the School Programs Manager for InsideOut Literary Arts, where Detroit-area students know her as Poet Brown. Shawntai is a board member and playwright with Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre which co-produced the devised work “Breaking Laws To Gain Freedom: Liberating Stories from Detroit” at Open Book Theatre in Trenton, Michigan. She was a participating playwright in Harlem9 48 Hours In Detroit (2019) where she developed the play “We Own Everything that was staged at the Obsidian Theatre Festival (2022). She cofounded Black LGBT+ Plays with her wife, Alesyn McCall, and together they cohost of the Woman Crush Everyday, a web show highlighting Black women-loving-women characters in media. Shawntai is the writer and co-producer of Black LGBT+ Play’s short film “Don’t Break Up Over Text”. She has taught writing workshops and participated on panels across Michigan, including most recently for the Detroit Impact Arts Conference (2024) and Black Theater Network Conference (2023). She was the luncheon speaker for Michigan Council for Teachers of English (2019) and worked as a guest playwright at Wayne State University (2022/23). She is a 2020 Kresge Live Arts Fellow for playwriting.
Shawntai enjoys her Detroit west side bungalow with her wife and their dog, Truffle.
_____________________________________________________________
Shawntai is the founder and writer of eLLe Kalamazoo, an episodic play series following 6 lesbian, bi and queer women. eLLe was created in 2010 and has been in production since 2011. Many thanks to Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative, Queer Theatre Kalamazoo, and Face Off Theatre for their support in the creation and lifespan of this project.
“My work isn’t to fill in the gaps, it is made to create new spaces. My characters are not the best friend or brief anecdotes in a larger story. Queer characters of color are the center. Honoring diversity within queer characters (gender presentation, relationship structures, age, race, SES and career) has provided lgbtq+ actors more opportunities to play characters they intersect with, and provided an entry point for conversations and community building.”
Appreciate the art? Give a gift to the artist on CashApp $PayShawntai or Venmo @Shawntai-Brown
sbscribes.com 