[3] She published the book Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry in 2011.

[4] the new black, published in 2011 was lauded by poet Le Hinton and he also said Shockley was the "present and future of poetry.

Her work includes a kind of collage style that mixes more tradition forms with quizzes or labels and compares historical figures and contemporary cultural icons with scenes of civil rights movements and atrocities of the twenty first century.

The title plays with the same kind of pun referring to the gun and also her take on a cycle of contemporary reactions to violence.

She dedicated this book to Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi who founded Black Lives Matter.