Nicole Shawan Junior

Nicole Shawan Junior (Smith College BA | Pace University MST | Temple University JD) was born & bred in the bass-heavy beat & scratch of Brooklyn, where the Bed-Stuy cool of beautiful inner-city life barely survived cripplings caused by crack cocaine. She is a black, queer and poverty-born multi-genre counter-storyteller, felon and former police prosecutor. Nicole’s writing has appeared in Gay Mag (Roxane Gay’s platform with Medium), Zora, Color Bloq, For Harriet, The Feminist Wire, Rigorous Magazine, and more.

Nicole has received numerous fellowships and residencies from arts organizations including New York Foundation for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Lambda Literary, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Wild Acres, and more. She is an alum of various literary conferences including Bread Loaf and Hurston/Wright. Nicole is the 2019 NYFA Geri Ashur Fellow, the 2018 Brooklyn Arts & Film Fesitval’s Nonfiction Prize Finalist and Honorable Mention, and a two-time NeON Arts Teaching Artist Grant Recipient. In 2019, she was named Cafe con Libros’ inaugural Resident Literary Curator.

Nicole's currently completing her memoir, Cracked Concrete: A Memoir of Crackheads, Cousins & Crime.

An educator, Nicole teaches nonfiction writing to marginalized storytellers. That is, storytellers who are poverty-born, BIPoC, queer, trans, formerly incarcerated, and/or currently under state control. Although Brooklyn-based, Nicole has facilitated her Roots. Wounds. Words. Writing Workshop across the country from Boston to Brownsville, New Orleans to New York City.

Nicole is the founder of COUNTERpult – NYC’s only reading series that centers the counter-narratives of LGBTQIA+/BIPoC storytellers.