A Rich Literary Bond

Issue 16 | Spring 2009

Angela Shannon and Rohan Preston share a number of things—literary talent, love of the arts, a 15-year marriage, and two beautiful daughters. Plus, both are currently on the faculty at Bethel University.

Shannon, assistant professor of English, teaches creative writing, college writing, and poetry. She has a bachelor’s degree in theatre from Florida State University and a master’s in fine arts from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Shannon’s father, Dr. John L. Smith, is past president of Fisk University, and her mother, Dr. Juel Smith, taught at the University of South Florida, where she founded the Institute on Black Life and a foundation for women in leadership.

Preston, the lead theatre critic for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, is Bethel’s journalist-in-residence; he also teaches Topics in the Arts, an English course at Bethel. Preston, who was born in Jamaica but grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., has a degree in English from Yale. A prolific essayist, poet, and journalist, he was a news stringer for the New York Times and later, an arts critic with the Chicago Tribune. He is author of a collection of poetry, Dreams in Soy Sauce, and co-editor of the anthology, Soulfires: Young Black Men on Love and Violence.

The couple moved to Minnesota 11 years ago when Preston was recruited for his current position with the newspaper. Shannon taught as an adjunct professor at both Hamline University and North Hennepin County Community College. Both have been published in many journals and anthologies, including Water-Stone, TriQuarterly, Essence, and Ploughshares. Shannon’s book of poetry, Singing the Bones Together, was named a finalist for the 2004 Minnesota Book Awards. (One critic noted that Shannon “possesses a gift for lyric poems of intimate intensity.”) Her work caught the eye of Donna Johnson, associate campus pastor at Bethel. Johnson invited her to do a poetry reading on campus, and later, when Shannon saw a faculty position open up, she applied.

“The job description reflected so much of what I want to do,” she recalls. “I knew that this was where I was supposed to be.”

Preston’s first brush with Bethel was also a guest appearance. Two years ago, he was invited to participate in the annual Journalism Through the Eyes of Faith conference, and joined the English faculty last fall. Both bring a lifelong faith heritage to their classrooms. “My faith is part of my heritage,” Shannon says. “I pray for my students, and I’m always looking for God in whatever we’re exploring.”

“My family was involved in both Baptist and Catholic churches in Jamaica,” adds Preston, who has fond memories of reading the Bible aloud to his beloved great-grandmother there. “I try to honor God with the knowledge and techniques I impart in the classroom. I go through this world with wonder and humility, and try to share that perspective as well.”

As befits two poets, both point to the Psalms as their favorite inspiration in Scripture. “They speak to the soul,” Shannon says. “I never tire of reading ‘O Lord, O Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!’” The couple both claim family as their greatest source of personal satisfaction and enjoy reading together, theatre outings, and game nights with Adisa, 6, and Adera, 11.

Carrying Home
I am carrying home in my breast pocket:
land where I learned to crawl,
dust that held my footprints,
long fields I trod through.
Home, where Mother baked bread,
where Papa spoke with skies,
where family voices gathered
In my palm, this heap of earth
I have hauled over hills and valleys.
Releasing dirt between my fingers,
I ask the prairies to sustain me.
May my soil and this soil nurture each other,
may seeds root and develop beyond measure,
may the heartland and I blossom.

From Singing the Bones Together
by Angela Shannon