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 cultivates inclusive cultural ecologies for planetary justice.

Photo by Daion Chesney

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Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair

Random Experiments in Bioluminescence

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From the Publisher: A remarkable collection of poems for cherishing language and habitat on Earth — From poet and urbanist Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo.

“Listen with your natural body,” writes Shimshon-Santo. “In the beginning, there was song.” Random Experiments in Bioluminescence tracks a woman’s search for connection, language, and belonging. She pays homage to urban trees, walks along the Pacific Ocean holding the feather of a gull, and hears rain play marimba on forest leaves and branches. She experiments with form, scribbling faux-mathematical formulas to echolocate herself within the cosmos. Choral, cryptographic, and exhilarating, Shimshon-Santo provides glimpses into a poetics of livability.

The collection opens with a “genealogy of the moment,” where a cast of human characters is replaced by a sketch of interconnections: paw prints, gestures, sunlight. Her accomplices are letters and millipedes, sparrows and lemon trees, shadow and light—in “x or x prime clock time.” All life has agency. Trees and vines tangle their hair together to escape over brick walls. A piano decomposes into forest mulch. Seaweed fronds curl around pilings. Gravity “plants humans in the ground like oaks” while a black bird murmuration elevates skyward. The poet finally locates herself within the cosmos as a “rapture gawker of infinity consciousness.” 

Her verse has kinesthetic authority on the page, flowing from right to left, left to right, or woven top down into a conversation between four languages. Mother tongues share pages, side-by-side-by-side, in a line dance of translations by the author, her family, and friends. A “Villanelle for Yemanja” (Ifa deity and mother of the fishes) coexists with a piyyut inspired by the talmudic Akdamut. She morphs poems into flow charts, pictograms, haikus, and chants, all scattered between photographs. The outcome of her “random experiments” is a homecoming to the body and the planet; respect for womanhood, and awe for the multiplicity of life, languages, and habitats on planet Earth.

Performances & Workshops

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Testimonials

“Amy is a force to be reckoned with. She seamlessly floats, flutters, and flies within and around spheres of artistry as both a necessary expression of her soul, and as an ignition and space-holding for the authentic and sacred creative expression of those fortunate to be in any form of relationship with her. Amy’s generosity and support included deep curiosity, though-provoking inquiry, authentic affirmation and nourishing encouragement.

- Onyi Love

“La Dra. Shimshon-Santo facilita espacios multilingües y lúdicos en el que sesión a sesión nos representamos, estamos presentes a través de la creatividad, la interculturalidad, el respeto, la diversidad de idiomas y geografías.”

- Delia Chávez

“In a world often divided by borders and barriers, Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo's multilingual reading served as a reminder of our shared humanity. IWWG was delighted to feature Amy at our global open mic - her performance was a celebration of the beauty of linguistic expression. Thank you Amy for sharing your gift with the world!”

- Michelle Providence, International Women Writer’s Guild

“The vibrancy Amy brings to a space is one-of-a-kind; it really felt like she was channeling the divine from that lectern, weaving sonic hypnosis with deep knowledge of language, history, and religion. I would jump at the chance to work with her again.”

- Ivy Raff

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.