Shannon May Powell is a poet, artist and somatic therapist whose work poses gestures of longing towards new possibilities of gender, sexuality and identity in a posthumanist world. Their practice is grounded in the body and relationally activated by the people and places they collaborate with.

Their work has featured at the Emerging Writers Festival, Berlin Feminist Film Festival, New York Art Book Fair, Centre for Contemporary Photography, The Wheeler Centre, PHOTO 2022 festival, and the National Portrait Gallery among others. Between 2016-1019 in Melbourne and Berlin they worked as a writer and photographer for i-D magazine. In 2022 they published their debut poetry and photography book, 'Can we rest tonight in the amnesia of pleasure,' with no more poetry. Much of their work was developed during the VARDA houseboat artist residency in California where they were fortunate to be an artist in residence during 2018, 2019 and 2020. More recently they were engaged in the Pocoapocco artist residency in Oaxaca, Mexico where their poetry practice began mutating into more ephemeral mediums of performance art.

Alongside their own creative practice, they work as an artistic director at Blindside Gallery in Melbourne, where they take pleasure in supporting artists to bring their vision to life. This year they have been awarded a fellowship at The State Library Wheeler Centre in Melbourne where they are working on a new book.