Ashunda Norris

Ashunda is a Black feminist multidisciplinary artist with creative work that encompasses film, poetry, archiving and her own theoretical frameworks. Her art is preoccupied with ancestral inheritance, Black womxnhood as a freedom site, futuristic maroon expressions and fugitivity. She has written, directed and produced several short films, including her most recent multi award winning cinematic project, MINO: A Diasporic Myth; now streaming on kweliTV.

A California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellow, Ashunda’s art has been supported by Cave Canem, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Community of Writers, Brooklyn Poets, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony and The Lemon Tree House in Italy. She is an inaugural Starshine & Clay Fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee and one of 15 filmmakers selected for Haile Gerima’s Liberated Territory MasterClass. Ashunda’s writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Obsidian, Taint Taint Taint, Rootwork Journal, Fence, EcoTheo Review and other noteworthy literary publications.

Ashunda was born and raised in the heart of rural, red clay Georgia, on land once inhabited by the Hichiti, Miccosukee and Oconee people, and is a proud alumna of Paine College and Howard University. The artist holds MFAs in both Poetry and Screenwriting. A country blk girl at heart, Ashunda loves hot water cornbread, the ocean, obscure cinema and star Sirius. She lives and works in Los Angeles.