Shondra Bowie Riley

Shondra Bowie Riley is a Gen X, African-American, Poet, Writer and former DJ from South Los Angeles. Her Substack, Relevant Sense, reflects experiences as a young stroke survivor, Ex-pat, and woman of colour over fifty. As former Co-Director, Sub-editor, and Writer for the True & Woke blog and digital magazine, she wrote articles on equality, climate change, gender-based violence and personal essays on living with a disability. Her portrait and words were part of Nikki Kilburn’s ‘Our Voices’ at the 2020 Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival and Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket in 2022. Her writing has been published on Heroica and in the University of Lincoln’s virtual exhibition, ‘Rooms of Our Own: The Lockdown House’. Shondra delivers accessible poetry that reflects her unique intersectional world view to cultivate awareness, introspection, and empathy in a world that needs it now more than ever.