Instagram story viewer> @offthebeatenshelf> Posts

Mandy Shunnarah

@offthebeatenshelf

4.3K

followers

5660

following

🌈🇵🇸 /📍Columbus, OH writer & bookseller at @prologuebookshop
Author: MIDWEST SHREDS (@beltpub 2024) & WE HAD MANSIONS (@diodeeditions 2025)
Order ⬇️

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

I’m obsessed with my book cover with @manicpussay’s art!! I can’t believe I (and all of you!!) will get to hold this baby soon. ❤️🖤🤍💚

It’s hard to celebrate and be happy when there’s so much sadness and need in the homeland. 14k people are hungry because of Is-a-hell as we speak. When cruelty knows no bounds, we must bind it and stop its spread. I know we’re all tired, but there are still small things we can do every day that make a difference. Keep going. Keep giving, advocating, writing, and marching. Please don’t stop. ❤️🖤🤍💚

Repost from @diodeeditions by @offthebeatenshelf

332

37

a year ago

Just checking because the scent sore ship is real. by @offthebeatenshelf

75

3

a year ago

Tap that lincoln bayou to snag one 🙏

Repost from @beltpub
•
New cover Friday!

MIDWEST SHREDS is the only book to do a comprehensive tour of skating (on a board, roller skates, blades, or a wheelchair) in a region regularly overlooked by the larger community. Coming July 2! by @offthebeatenshelf

162

5

3 years ago

Do you like to PARTY with COLLAGE? Do you want to scream into the void alongside other likeminded creative weirdos? Come to the free collage party for the opening reception of Pulp Stiction: Collage as an Act of Resistance at Hopkins Hall Gallery on Friday, October 30 from 5–8 PM!

This event will be hosted by the Columbus Collage Collective, featuring music from DJ LaChewLa—host of Peaks and Valleys (peaksandvalleyswgrn) on 91.9 WGRN Columbus—and a poetry performance by Mandy Shunnarah (@offthebeatenshelf).

RSVP for the free event at uas.osu.edu/events or the link in bio!

Pulp Stiction is a national juried exhibition curated by Emily Morgan of Lovely But Dead in partnership with Urban Arts Space. It runs October 26 through December 11, 2026 at Hopkins Hall Gallery on The Ohio State University’s main campus. Seventy-three works will be on display in the gallery, with nineteen more in a digital exhibition.

Featuring a hands-on scrap room, a community collage, a curator walkthrough, and collage parties throughout the run, ending with a closing party December 11, Pulp Stiction pulls the viewer into the world of collage as an art form and a release mechanism.

Promo Design by Miles Dobson @miles_of_arts
Promo Artwork by: Ian Tothill @iantothill

#collage #collageparty #resistance #ohiostate #columbusohio @osu_art_ PULP STICTION COLLAGE PARTY
OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, October 30, 5-8 PM
Free
Hopkins Hall Gallery
Collage of two people dancing taken in Hopkins Hall by @offthebeatenshelf

135

6

19 hours ago

🚨🚨SATURDAY EVENING POETRY MASHUP ALERT! 🚨🚨
7-9p // Oct 17

Sara Abou Rashed!
Mandy Shunnarah!

Two Dollar Radio HQ

Suggested donation: $10 by @offthebeatenshelf

96

4

5 days ago

My birthday is in 10 days and all I want is for Sameer to have everything they need ❤️🖤🤍💚 @thesameerproject by @offthebeatenshelf

86

3

11 days ago

Doing a fun thing! Catch me performing poems while twitching from over-caffeination on Saturday, October 3rd, at 1pm! Stick around because there are talented folks before and after both days 🩷 taken in Franklin County Fair-Hilliard, Ohio by @offthebeatenshelf

46

4

16 days ago

Diane is the coolest and this was so fun to be a part of! I’ve been in Columbus for 11 years now and while I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since I was 5, I wasn’t a poet until this city made me one. The poetry community here is unmatched in kindness, talent, and humility, and I’ll be forever grateful for accidentally ending up in the exact place I needed to be. 🩷

Repost from @quotidianwriter
•
If Virginia is for lovers, then…

Thank you to all the wonderful poets who participated in this “Ohio cento”! I meant to post this during the Columbus Book Festival in July, but thankfully we’re still deep in poetry season with The Poetry Festival having just ended and the Columbus Coffee Festival poetry stage coming up next weekend.

Sometimes I worry about being too sincere, too cheesy, too sentimental (hence me anxiously texting my writerly friends, “Is this cringe?!?!” before posting anything). But poetry naturally brings out that side of me, and so I will honor that invitation to openness and the vulnerability of all poets who share their work with the world.

Feel free to add to the cento and share your own line about Ohio below! :)

#poetry #poems #ohio #ohiopoets #poetryreading @notesfromalisha @citizendorians @mahleahart @offthebeatenshelf @shes.from.outerspace @christinaszuch @darrencdemaree by @offthebeatenshelf

25

2

20 days ago

Come find me being authorly at Books and Beer Fest!! You’ll also find @terreece @tjwwrites @lovely_but_dead @jordandanking @siganometry @signeturepublishing and more!!! by @offthebeatenshelf

104

5

22 days ago

Hey, I know what you’re doing next Saturday! Note the new time and place if you saw a previous version of the flier 🧡 Tagged some of the folks who will be there, and there are many more! by @offthebeatenshelf

22

0

a month ago

We can’t wait to host this special poetry reading celebrating the “By Our Nature” exhibition at Hopkins Hall Gallery! The event will feature work from four incredible Columbus-based queer poets: Ruth Awad, Connor Beeman, Misha Ponnuraju, and Mandy Shunnarah.

Join us on Wednesday, September 16 from 6–8 PM at Hopkins for an evening of community and spoken word. This event is free and open to all.

RSVP at the link in bio or uas.osu.edu/events/poetry-reading-our-nature.

In “By Our Nature,” Jo Birdsell navigates the changing political reality for queer people in the United States through photography and film, alongside Anton Bou, Taylor Nice, Coyote Park, and Lauren Buck Withrow. As both land and body become sites of major political suppression, Birdsell relates to their own queerness by planting themselves firmly in the landscape of the rural United States.

#poetryreading #queerpoets #ohiopoets #queerphotography #ohio Promotional poster for a "By Our Nature" poetry reading at Hopkins Hall Gallery, featuring photographs of landscape scenes and event details. (September 16 from 6-8 pm) taken in Hopkins Hall by @offthebeatenshelf

167

10

a month ago

Around this time last year when I was doing interviews for We Had Mansions, folks kept asking what I was working on next. With my first book being nonfiction and my second being poetry, I gave an answer I thought was logical: nonfiction. I reasoned that if I switched back and forth between genres, I wouldn’t get creatively burnt out.

Creative burnout was weighing on my mind because I’d barely written a poem I liked in months, but I wasn’t feeling inspired by my nonfiction either. I even went to an absolutely fantastic writers conference and felt like I could barely take in what I was learning because my brain was so saturated with overwhelm, while the creative well was dry.

I barely wrote for months, and during that time I played a lot of video games, read a lot of books, and did a lot of staring at the wall and thinking. I felt guilty because people were hyping my book, but I didn’t feel creative at all. And there’s the pressure around “doing what you love means you’ll never work a day in your life,” when the truth is that I was working harder than ever. If not on generating new work, then on events and getting We Had Mansions out there. I kept telling myself the poems would come back, but it wasn’t until I made peace with the fact that they might not that I was able to get back to the page.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans. I thought I’d be writing nonfiction since that’s what I told everyone I’d be doing, but the poems came back with a vengeance. The new manuscript is far from finished, but I’m proud to be at a point where I can share the news. I’m especially grateful for @gcac_cbus, whose Fun(ds) for Artists grant is allowing me to work with the brilliant, inimitable, and outrageously talented @sayuriayerswrites to edit what I have so far.

I’m still researching and plotting the next nonfiction book, but I think y’all are going to like this delightful detour. If you’ve heard me perform recently, you’ve heard some of the new work. The vibe in emoji form (in no particular order) is ❤️🖤🤍💚 🐈 🐸 🐝 🐦‍⬛ 🔪 🤠 💪 🥊 🎮🙃🤪🫠 by @offthebeatenshelf

103

19

2 months ago