Book Launch Video

What She Was Wearing

Annie Bloom’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon.

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About The Red Shoe Poet

 

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders is a globally published, award-winning poet who can’t stand the taste of coconut, eats pistachios daily and loves shoes … especially red ones! She’s a Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net nominee, co-founder of The Poetry Box press, managing editor for The Poeming Pigeon and former journal designer for VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices and visions.

She was voted Best Female Performing Poet in 2009 in the Sacramento News & Review and awarded first place in the inaugural El Dorado County Slam Championship in April 2013.  Shawn founded and hosted the “Verse on the Vine” poetry show for two years in Folsom, CA (www.VerseOnTheVine.com) and has been a featured poet in Sacramento, Grass Valley, San Francisco, Sausalito, Seattle, Kirkland, St. Louis and Portland.

Shawn’s poetry has appeared in journals worldwide, including Calyx, OneArt, Quartet, About Place Journal, Timberline Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, McQueen’s Quinterly, and many others. Author of What She Was Wearing (2019), her manuscript, Pockets, was a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest (2024) and is forthcoming from MoonPath Press in Fall 2025. Shawn is two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. A proud mom and Nana, she shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon.