Shasta McBride, Writer and Artist

About Shasta McBride

I grew up on Kauai in a family of artists, teachers, mathematicians, and spiritualists. When I was five, my mother took me behind a waterfall to a hidden chamber in a valley and told me we had gone to Narnia. Growing up, everything had that quality — magic, the sacred. In the water, surfing or scuba diving, I wanted to fuse with everything. I started writing stories about what I saw.

I studied English Literature and Creative Writing at Lewis & Clark College, and later worked with writers Annie Dawid, Vern Rutsala, Mark Haskell Smith, Susan Wyler, and Lisa Cron. Night Surfing is my debut literary novel, begun in 2009 and completed in 2026. It's a three-movement story about myth, the sea, and what we carry across water.

I also make photographs — studies in the natural softness of nighttime, ocean, women, and flowers. The writing and the image-making come from the same place: the feeling that any ordinary moment is also, if you look directly at it, mysterious. The artist whose work I return to most is Miya Ando. The writers I live inside are Iris Murdoch and Clarice Lispector — [placeholder for more as the list grows].

I have a parallel professional life as a senior content strategist. You can find that work here. I live in Northern California with my family and cats.

Let’s work together.

I'm available for senior contract and full-time remote engagements in content strategy, UX writing, and information architecture. Outside of client work, I write literary fiction, make fine-art photography, train for long-distance hiking, and volunteer with wildfire-resilience and community-development organizations in Northern California.

shastamcbride@gmail.com (310) 694-7786