Shayla Lawson is the author of This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope and three poetry collections: I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean, A Speed Education in Human Being, and Pantone. She has written for Tin House, PAPER, ESPN, Salon, Guernica, and others, but she mostly writes for you. Lawson was born in Rochester, Minnesota, raised in Lexington, Kentucky, studied architecture in Italy and spent a few years as a Dutch housewife—milkmaid braids and all. A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Lawson is a professor at Amherst College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.