Shawn R. Jones was born in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She is the co-owner of Tailored Tutoring LLC and Kumbaya Academy, Inc. She holds an MFA from Rutgers-Camden and is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Womb Rain and A Hole to Breathe. Her work has appeared in Tri-Quarterly, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and her poetry collection, Date of Birth, has won the 2022 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry and is forthcoming from Persea Books in 2023.