MFA Candidate Gabrielle Oliver interviews Shayla Lawson during her visit to the University of Kentucky.

Shayla Lawson is the author of THIS IS MAJOR: NOTES ON DIANA ROSS, DARK GIRLS & BEING DOPE (Harper Perennial, 2020) and three poetry collections: I THINK I'M READY TO SEE FRANK OCEAN, A SPEED EDUCATION IN HUMAN BEING and PANTONE. She has written for Tin House, PAPER, ESPN, Salon, Guernica, & others, but she mostly writes for you.

A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Shayla Lawson curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree (pronounced Shayla, no relation).

She was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, is a professor at Amherst College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.