NEWEST NEWS

The Society of Professional Journalists has announced the winners of the 2024 Green Eyeshade awards, and I’m thrilled to have received third place in the Humorous Commentary division.

I hosted a reading (and read my work) at the Dalton Creative Arts Guild in Dalton, Georgia on July 25th, 2024.

Travel+ Leisure published my article about artist Trés Taylor’s 225-mile mural project through the Black Belt. 

I read with poet and UTC professor Kris Whorton and novelist and Southern New Hampshire University professor Jessica Barksdale at the ArtsBuild building in downtown Chattanooga on June 6, 2024. 

CanvasRebel spotlights creatives and entrepreneurs, and I am thrilled to be in this issue. See it here. 

My second book, Finding the World: Thoughts on Life, Love Home and Dogs, is now available. It’s a collection of my most popular Chattanooga Times Free Press columns from the past twenty years. It’s funny, serious, and touches on everything from, well, life, to dogs, and everything in-between.

The Today show picked up my essay about my unlikely relationship with the kids across the street. You can read it on their website, here.

GENERAL STUFF:
I’m an author, essayist, and four-time award-winning columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press (First Place, Humorous Commentary, 2020 Green Eyeshade Awards; First Place, Travel Writing, 2021 Green Eyeshade Awards; Second Place, Humor Writing, 2019 National Society of Newspaper Columnists; Third Place, Humorous Commentary, 2023 Green Eyeshade Awards). My essays have been nominated for inclusion in Best American Essays and for a Pushcart, and I am past editor of the Chattanooga Jewish Federation magazine, The Shofar.

My first book,  The Body Tourist: A Memoir of Hunger and the Search for Home,  is about the intersection of my incomplete recovery from anorexia with my mental health career. It’s a candid, compassionate, and at times darkly funny look at the underbelly of illness and recovery. New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Mitchard called it “riveting reading,” and said, “Dana Shavin can write with both hands, by turns comic and tragic, and always fiercely honest.”

Want to get a flavor of The Body Tourist without the time commitment? Read The Body Tourist in 34 Lines.
Want me to visit your book club? I’d love that (and if you’re local, I’ll even bring homemade cookies). 

You can read some of my essays here.
Have something to say to me? Email me at [email protected]. 

And follow me on Facebook at Dana Shavin Writes for updates on publications and presentations.

Thanks for stopping by!