My name is Shana Turner and Community Solstice is where my work as a writer, facilitator, organizer, and grassroots educator come together.
Born on the summer solstice, I am a working-class, queer femme of Irish and Jewish descent from Boston who has lived in New Orleans for sixteen years.
I was raised in a tradition of radical feminism, most influenced by single mothers–white, Black, and brown–whose activism is rooted in relationship-building, cultural work, 'each one, teach one' kitchen table organizing, and solidarity across struggles.
I bring twenty-five years of experience with justice organizing, infrastructure development, participatory planning, creative writing projects, and collective learning through a popular education praxis. My insights about how power functions are also informed by my experiences sustaining myself throughout most of my life with jobs in food service, house cleaning, and childcare.
Through my work, I seek to treat wounds as sites for transformation, to complicate the false binary between victim and offender in intra-community conflict, and engage rituals of ceremony in the ordinary movements of everyday life. My work assesses equity and disparities of power within groups, and interrogates the construction and perpetuation of violent domination and supremacy, including exploring crossroads between division or solidarity within the histories of my lineages.
Front porches, racial tensions, stretch marks, kitchen tables, coming of age, queerness, lives interrupted by violence, natural human magic and intricacies of working-class culture are threads in my writing. I am currently working to complete my first novel, 'Claiming Caidin.'
Contact: info@communitysolstice.com
Current Community Writing Projects
YESTERDAY'S FUTURE
I am serving as
Editing Team Coordinator & Logistics Manager
THE GARDEN HOUSE WRITING RESIDENCY
I am serving as
Organizer
DIFFERENT THREADS OF THE SAME FABRIC
I am serving as
Steward of the Process
PAST COMMUNITY WRITING PROJECTS
