Angela Shannon was born in Oklahoma and raised in Tampa, Florida. After a decade of living and writing in Chicago, she moved to Minneapolis with her husband, poet and theater critic Rohan Preston, where they live today with their children. Shannon's poetry has been published in TriQuarterly, Ploughshares and other magazines, and her choreopoem, Root Woman, premiered at the Fleetwood-Jourdain Theater in Evanston, Illinois, in 2001. She has won a poetry fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and a Mentor Award from The Loft in Minneapolis, where she has also taught. She received an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College.