Shawna still remembers the first book that she completed in third grade. It had illustrations on every page and pink construction paper stapled to the front and the back. She mostly remembers the librarian, who took one look at it and told Shawna she should write books. A concept that made an eight-year-old giddy. 

Shawna grew up in the beautiful Rogue Valley of Southern Oregon. Cultivating her greatest memories and love of the outdoors running around her family’s home in the country with her siblings. Her education and career led her on many paths and helped her discover that the lights of a cityscape could also fill her with awe. As an avid traveler, she is just as likely to be on a beach as a bustling city or the peak of a mountain.

One of her favorite parts of travel is finally slowing down and finding time to read, and to write.

Jane Eyre was a reading assignment her freshman year in college, and reading Charlotte Bronte was easily her favorite hours spent on homework. Since then, she has enjoyed everything from Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, The Martian by Andy Weir, and ones that touched many lives such as Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Her favorite book is Uneducated by Tara Westover and her favorite author is Brene Brown (which may or may not connect to the years she dedicated to social work).

She loves characters you can relate to and stories that make you feel something.

This makes it not at all surprising that her favorite story will always be the winding, unexpected path that made sure she ended up with the love of her life. 

She cherishes her dear friends, whom she calls her council of confidants, that spread to many corners of this country. Her favorites are the ones who have helped her load and unload during multiple cross country moves. She is the founder of The Grit Show (www.TheGritShow.com), a podcast that creates a community around Purpose Alignment and Growth. A place for the scrappers and survivors to come together and be seekers and thrivers. 

In 2017 when the world went sideways, as it sometimes does, she half-jokingly told her friends she needed to write or else the universe would keep giving her things to write about. This is when things conspired to make her debut novel possible. By interweaving life lessons with endearing characters and transformative experiences, Shawna creates women’s fiction that helps us see how universal many of our experiences are and what a gift of escape reading can be. She finds it an honor to be writing books, just as her elementary school librarian once foretold.