My name is Shannon, I grew up a hippy California child, and I write about messy honesty (thank you Barbara Kingsolver!).

THE DELT𝚫 HOTEL, a femme noir, is my first novel. At my core I am a teacher and a creative, who has spent my life teaching English literature and writing (27 years) around the world (U.S., Serbia, Brazil, Netherlands, Senegal) to middle and high school students, mostly in international school settings. I have also been a curriculum partner for the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam, promoting tolerance and acceptance through story-telling: https://www.storiesthatmove.org/en/teaching-materials/five-learning-paths/. Helping young people find their voice and being of service has been my life's work.

In 2023 I took a sabbatical from teaching and returned home to the U.S. from West Africa. As a now ‘empty-nester' and 'educator-on-leave', with the world as my oyster, I entered a severe depression and feeling of being totally untethered for the first time in my life. I found out that liberation can be tricky to navigate, but I read The Creative Act: A Way Of Being by Rick Rubin, and my life began to reshape.

I joined the Stanford creative writing community and became a student again. It was at this moment, that my novel — one that I had workshopped years prior with a filmmaker friend in Amsterdam — began to beckon to me again. It was through the process of writing it down that I began to feel well again — great actually! I began to sit with my fingers on the keyboard, listening to my inner voice, sometimes for hours upon hours. This creative practice became a yearlong meditation.

With time and their generosity, the women of the Delta Hotel began to speak to me once again, and the story flowed out in a way that I had never experienced before -- easily, like exuberant rushing water. I worked every day, and after 13 months, had finished THE DELT𝚫 HOTEL, a femme noir. I worked with a professional editor for the last year reworking the novel.

In November 2024, the Presidential election occurred and I felt more than ever that the book needed to be read. Then came 2025, a time of neo-McCarthyism, stories of Russian interference with American government, the normalization of “grabbing her by the pussy”, a post #Metoo America, then the deportations, fear of ‘other’, and the ever-grooming norm of governmental surveillance. These are all themes at the Delta in 1953.

What now? I am working on the sequel to THE DELT𝚫 HOTEL, this time set in 1974 (Patty Hearst, Vietnam, post-Watergate, The Pill, Roe v. Wade, Ms. Magazine…). This book will be the second in a series of femme noirs set in the same women's residency Delta Hotel in downtown San Francisco -- new complex, badass women, noir duplicity, sexuality, inner monologues, dark humor, and gritty edge. Same femme noir style.

I am so excited that you read to the end! Thank you.