Shawn’s writing career began in earnest in the late ‘90s as a music critic for the Rocket, a now defunct bi-monthly music magazine that focused on Northwest artists.

When the Rocket closed its doors in October of 2000, Shawn continued to write music criticism, arts and entertainment pieces for the Tablet, Seattle Sound Magazine, the Louisville Eccentric Observer, eyeheartmusic.com, and most notably, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which sent him to many, many concerts where he was both entertained, bored and, at times, blown away. He is currently working on a memoir “I Gave My Ears to Rock ‘N’ Roll” which chronicles his experiences, observations and philosophies related to music, music appreciation and music criticism while slowly going deaf.

In addition to writing about music, Shawn also writes screenplays, short stories, children’s stories, essays, bad poetry and a few yet-to-be/soon-to-be/one-day-maybe published books. Some of his plays have even been produced and his ten-minute play Coming Back was an official selection for the Inner Voices Social Issue Theatre. Aside from this honor, Shawn’s creative writing has garnered no other awards, though his music criticism has, at times, inspired its own criticism, including vitriolic attacks on his character, condemnations of his intelligence, repudiations of his taste and two death threats: one written and one verbal.