One Body of Work
Writing
The scholarly and the imaginative, drawn as one body of work. What is, and what could be.
The Black Cell
2022 American Fiction Awards
2022 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards
The Black Cell is entering a new chapter.
A new edition of The Black Cell is now in preparation, with a new cover and a new home at Roots and Wire Press.
While the new edition is being prepared, the book will be temporarily unavailable for purchase.
But this is not simply a return.
The world that began with The Black Cell is growing.
The Black Cell is now Book One of The Resistance Chronicles, a speculative fiction series exploring power, oppression, resistance, and the difficult choices people make when the world around them becomes unrecognizable.
The story continues in Seeds of Resistance, Book Two, whose first draft is now complete.
Before resistance becomes a movement, it becomes a choice.
“The Black Cell allows us to imagine a reality beyond our current system. As we work towards change now, we need to be able to hold, imagine, and envision that something else is possible.”
Leah RothsteinCo-author of Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law
New edition coming soon.
Audiobook Preview
Experience The Black Cell
2 min 45 sec · Captions shown on screen · Does not play until you press play
Contains a depiction of police violence.
Hear Wendy Shaia narrate a powerful scene from The Black Cell. When Corey Masters is stopped by police on a Baltimore street, every decision becomes a matter of survival.
Coming soon to BookBaby Bookshop
The Resistance Chronicles Continue
Seeds of Resistance
The first draft of Seeds of Resistance, Book Two of The Resistance Chronicles, is complete. The story continues.
The history of a movement determines its future.
Coming soon
Follow The Resistance Chronicles
Be the first to know when the new edition of The Black Cell is available, and receive occasional news about Seeds of Resistance and The Resistance Chronicles.
When Helping Isn't Enough: The SHARP Framework
Flagship Paper
The foundational paper that introduces the SHARP Framework as a practical lens for analyzing systems that shape human outcomes. It offers practitioners a way to examine structural oppression, historical context, professional roles, reciprocity, and power in the decisions they make every day.
The Helping Evaluation and Leadership Practice Review (HELP-R)
Tool for Supervision
A supervision and self-assessment tool that helps practitioners and leaders reflect on whether their practice aligns with the values they hold. It brings structure to the kind of honest reflection that most professional environments do not make room for.
Critiques of Trauma-Informed Systems
Encyclopedia of Social Work
An entry in the Encyclopedia of Social Work that examines the limits of trauma-informed approaches when they are adopted by systems without examining the structural conditions that produce trauma in the first place.
Undoing Racism
Forthcoming, with Ron Chisom
Stories from an antiracist organizer. This forthcoming book, co-authored with Ron Chisom, continues the work of naming what systems do and imagining what they could do instead. It tells the stories that rarely get written down: the slow, unglamorous, deeply human work of building something better.
The Record
Selected Publications
Author Note: Evidence-Based Practice in Research
In A. Baldwin-White & L. Ting (Eds.), An Antiracist/Anti-Oppressive Framework for Social Work Research. Cognella, 2025
A SHARPened Approach to Addressing Oppression in Child Welfare
In B. Smith & C. Gilliam (Eds.), Advancing Equity for Anti-Racist Child Welfare: Navigating the Intersection of the Profession, Policy, Practice, and Research. Cognella, 2025
With C. Beegle, K. Ingram, K. Green, J. Jang, and T. Bailey.
An Antiracist Lens for Guiding Collaboration Among Professionals in Child Welfare and K-12 School Settings
In B. Smith & C. Gilliam (Eds.), Advancing Equity for Anti-Racist Child Welfare: Navigating the Intersection of the Profession, Policy, Practice, and Research. Cognella, 2025
With T. Bailey, K. Ingram, K. Green, and S. McKinley.