Nicole Shawan J.

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT NICOLE SHAWAN J.

Nicole Shawan Junior (they/them) is a writer, arts administrator, community builder, and editor. Nicole\'s work includes founding and serving as the Executive Director of Roots. Wounds. Words.(RWW)—a national organization that provides BIPOC-led and -centered literary arts pedagogy, publication, and performance opportunities. Nicole also served as the Deputy Director of PEN America\'s Prison and Justice Writing department. In addition to leading literary arts programs, Nicole is a literary editor and artist. They served as editor-in-chief of Black Femme Collective and on the editorial teams at Women’s Studies Quarterly of the Feminist Press, SLICE Magazine, and Raising Mothers. Nicole was a guest editor at the Rumpus and the Massachusetts Review. Nicole also curated a limited column for Raising Mothers that centered first-person narratives written by justice-involved mothers. Nicole’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Edge of the World: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing (Blair 2025), The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer\'s Life in Prison (Haymarket 2022), Oprah Daily, Guernica, the Massachusetts Review, Teachers & Writers Magazine, The Rumpus, The Feminist Wire, ZORA, Gay Mag, SLICE and elsewhere. They have received residencies and fellowships from Hedgebrook, Tin House, Periplus, New York Foundation for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Changemaker Authors, and many more. Nicole also served as a decade-long trial attorney, prosecuting police and intimate partner violence cases in New York City. She ended her prosecutorial career as the New York City CCRB Deputy Chief Prosecutor, investigating and handling high-profile police misconduct cases. Nicole is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and a founding board member of the Marcy Houses Memorial Scholarship.