Margie Shaheed is a community poet and writer. Her work has been published in Essence Magazine, The Mom Egg Review, Black Magnolias, Femficatio, Split This Rock, Blackberry: A Magazine, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, and Spector Magazine. She is the author of two chapbooks, MOSIC (NightBallet Press, 2013) and ONOMONOPOEIA (NightBallet Press, 2015). Her manuscript, The Playground (poems) is the winner of the 2014 Hidden Charm Press Chapbook Contest and will be published in June, 2015. You can pick up a copy of Playground (poems) on Amazon.com.

She states this about her flash fiction pieces, "The setting for this collection of poems and flash fiction is the neighborhood bar found in many African-American communities across the country. The pieces offer a glimpse into the fictional lives of ordinary people whose existence is marked by drugs, poverty, racism and violence. Nonetheless, this is a community where people care about one another, a community where people do what they can to survive in a world that wants to forget about them, a community where people sometimes find beauty and grace in their difficult lives."