Shanda McManus, a physician writer who was born and raised in Philadelphia, received her B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.D. from Thomas Jefferson Medical College. She has practiced family medicine for over 20 years and is currently an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, where she teaches Narrative Medicine.

Shanda writes about the intersection of life, race, and medicine. Her writing has appeared in Intima Journal of Narrative Medicine, Midnight & Indigo, Bellevue Literary Review, and swamp pink. Her essay, Octopus Trap, was a finalist in the 2024 Perkoff Prize Competition by the Missouri Review.

In 2021, Shanda was named a PEN America Emerging Voices fellow in Creative Nonfiction and in 2023 she was a fellow at Baldwin For The Arts.

Publications

Donte’s Choice

Midnight & Indigo, 2020

Breathing: Live Reading

Bellevue Literary Review

Shanda is is a founding member of bookinc.org, a New Jersey based writing collective dedicated to helping writers draft, revise, and publish book length work. Through book inc., Shanda acts as peer artist leader for memoir incubator courses, teaches craft lessons, and contributes regularly to the book inc. newsletter.  In addition, she serves on the board of Project Write Now a community-based non-profit organization that serves vulnerable populations such as senior citizens, marginalized children and adults living with mental illness by teaching creative writing.