Biography

Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is a writer, teacher, and culture maker who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. She was born on Tovaangar land in current day Los Angeles, and has immediate family in the Southwest, the Middle East, and South America. Her art and community work nourish inclusive cultural ecologies for planetary justice. 

Amy has been a guest artist with UNESCO in Mexico, UNEB in Brazil, the PaGya! Literary Festival in Ghana, and the Lagos International Poetry Festival in Nigeria. She has also performed and/or taught throughout the U.S., Latin America, West Africa, and Singapore.

She is the author of Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (Flowersong Press, 2024), Catastrophic Molting (Flowersong Press, 2022), Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press, 2020), and the limited edition chapbook Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press, 2020). Her essays have appeared in numerous academic journals including Urban Education, Geo Humanities, and Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice. Keep an eye out for her forthcoming ecopoetics collection Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (Flowersong Press, 2024), and Radical Piecework: Ethnographies of Place (Unsolicited Press, 2025). She has been nominated for an Emmy Award, three Pushcart Prizes in poetry and creative nonfiction, a Rainbow Reads Award, Best of the Net in Poetry, and was a finalist for the Nightboat Book Poetry Prize.

She has edited or co-edited various anthologies including: Corpos, gêneros e literatura de autoria feminina with Ana Rita Santiago and Tatiana Pequeno (Revista de Crítica Cultura, 2023); Et Al.: New Voices in Arts Management with Genevieve Kaplan (IOPN, 2020); and Arts = Education (UC Press, 2010). Amy co-lead led the equity policy work group for California’s Blueprint for Creative Schools and co-wrote the section of the report on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with Dr. Mary Stone Hanley.

Her creative life began in dance and capoeira and somatic practice continues to invigorate her creative practice. She has performed extensively in the U.S. through the Southwest, Northwest, New York, Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Arts, St. Marks Church in the Bowery, and the Mondavi Center for the Arts. Internationally, she has performed in Singapore, Senegal, Mexico, Nicaragua, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana.

Amy co-founded the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, and went on to teach and direct arts programs at UCLA (ArtsBridge Program) and Claremont Graduate University (Arts Management Program). For 30+ years, she has taught in universities, K-12 schools, community centers, and spaces of incarceration. Amy was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning for her contributions to Arts Education.  

She earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch, and a B.A. in Latin American Studies from UC Santa Cruz.