Nicole Shawan Junior

Nicole Shawan Junior is a counter-storyteller who was bred in the bass-heavy beat and scratch of Brooklyn, where the cool of beautiful inner-city life barely survived crack cocaine’s burn. Her work appears in Gay Mag, The Feminist Wire, Kweli Journal, SLICE Magazine, CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action, ZORA, and elsewhere. Nicole has received residencies and fellowships from Hedgebrook, PERIPLUS, New York Foundation for the Arts, Lambda Literary, RADAR Productions and the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center, and more. Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Hurston/Wright Writers Week, Tin House Summer Workshop, VONA, Carnegie Hall, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and others have supported Nicole's work. Nicole is the founder of Roots. Wounds. Words. (a literary arts revolution that serves BIPOC storytellers), editor-in-chief of Black Femme Collective, prose editor at Women’s Studies Quarterly, associate nonfiction editor at SLICE Magazine, has guest edited for The Rumpus, and curates Raising Mothers: A Literary Magazine's “Justice Involved Mothers” column, which is penned by justice-impacted BIPOC women. Learn more about Nicole at NicoleShawanJunior.com.