About Sha'niel

Aiyana Sha’niel is a 20-year-old Black poet born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She has been writing for over seven years, beginning at Hamilton High School, where she wrote and performed on the school’s poetry team, Hamlit, and competed in Get-Lit competitions from 2017-2020.

Sha’niel has had individual pieces nationally through various online magazines such as Rooted Minds, Black Minds Publishing, and Death Rattle. Sha’niel’s work has been published in the Behind the Vision’s “The Story Behind the Poems,” Sims Library of Poetry’s “Poems in Praise of Libraries,” Street Poet’s “The Burning River” and others. She was Poetry Out Loud’s 2020 County representative for Los Angeles and placed second in the State competition. Sha’niel was also the Youth Poet Representative for the LA Arts Recover Fund Donors Banquet, at the Getty Museum, hosted by Debbie Allen.

She has performed and featured for various open mics, like Da Poetry Lounge, Palms Up Academy, Junior High LA, Get Lit mic, Sunday Jump, and others. She also started an open mic in collaboration with Nate Davis, The BackYart show, from 2018 to the beginning of the pandemic. She now works at Street Poets Inc. as a youth representative and teaching artist.

She is a 2021 graduate of the Community Literature Initiative program (CLI). She is the youngest student graduate from the program at 18 years old, with her own full body of work. Sha’niel signed to World Stage Press and released her first collection of poems, “Little Black Poetry Book”, on September 25th, 2022.