The day after Shawn was born, his crib was placed in the Queen’s Kitchen, his grandparent’s diner in rural Oklahoma where he would spend most of his early life. Alongside his mother, he grew up serving coffee and chicken fried steaks to wheat farmers, cattle ranchers, and oil field workers. Shawn left the southern plains and made his way to Nova Scotia, where he pursued a degree in Celtic Studies and became a fluent speaker, singer, and folklorist of Scottish Gaelic. Since then, he has traveled extensively, learned several languages, and earned a few degrees along the way. Shawn researches and teaches Cuban literary and cultural studies and continues to find a sense of self and home with his partner and dog in and in-between New York, Nova Scotia, and Oklahoma.