junior’s literary art
Nicole Shawan Junior is a genre-ambivalent writer whose prose, poetry, and hybrid literary art spans horror, fantasy, science fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Edge of the world
In Edge of the World, edited by Alden Jones, Junior toggles between an ongoing custody battle and a pilgrimage to Senegal. Contributors include Alexander Chee, Putsata Reang, and Alex Marzano-Lesnevich.
the massachusetts review
In this essay, Junior, a former lawyer who spent a decade prosecuting intimate partner violence, is faced with the biases inherent to legal presumptions when she fights to be deemed her son’s parent.
oprah daily
In this review of That Bird Has My Wings, Jarvis Jay Masters’s debut memoir, Junior teams up with Caits Meissner to write about how the incarcerated can find freedom of spirit through the written word.
teachers & writers mag
Excerpted from The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison, called “One of the best books on writing that I’ve ever read,” by The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander, Junior’s essay presents a road map for leading writing workshops in carceral spaces.
guernica
Following the structure of a makeup application tutorial, Junior writes about their dermatillomania, a disorder of chronic skin-picking. Dermatillomania can cause permanent scarring, showing a physical manifestation of a mental illness.
The Sentences That Create Us
In The Sentences That Create Us, Junior joins an ensemble cast of contemporary writers to offer writing advice, pedagogy, and resources to justice-involved writers. Contributors include Reginald Dwayne Betts, Zeke Caligiuri, Mitchell S. Jackson, Vivian Nixon, Spoon Jackson, and T Kira Mahealani Madden.
Sinister Wisdom
Sinister Wisdom 122: Writing Communities gathers a selection of work edited by Stephanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle under the rubric Writing Communities. These important pieces reflect on how writers build communities. Junior joins contributors Jewelle Gomez, Sheree L. Greer, Arisa White, and more.
the rumpus
Junior’s braided essay weaves together their adolescent experiences with racism in the north with a review of Khalisa Rae’s Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat. Rae’s collection is a spiritual journey replete with trauma, pain, exaltation, and transcendence.
temple indigo
Junior’s mythio-essay uses West African spiritual mythology as a compass to explore Junior’s queerness, severance from toxic familial relationships. and disconnection from their Catholic and Southern Baptist upbringing.
slice magazine
Slice Magazine Issue 26 immersed its readers in writing about perseverance. For this theme, Junior wrote about her experience as a dog walker while serving out a felony probation sentence.
inkwell black
Dedicated to amplifying Black poetry, Inkwell Black featured Junior’s poem, Burn, a scathing examination of a nation that has been aflame since well before the 2020 uprisings.
kweli journal
Edited by Nicole Dennis-Benn, Kweli Journal’s Girlhood issue features Junior’s memoir chapter, “Granada.” Selected as the only nonfiction piece in a collection of only six contributions, this is a coming-of-age story.
cura
CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action launched its 21st issue, Reverb, wherein it published Junior’s personal essay, “A List of Violations,” alongside the works of other incarcerated, formerly-incarcerated and/or justice-involved artists.
emerge by lambda literary
With a foreword by Danez Smith, this anthology is a collection of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and playwriting. Junior’s lyric essay, “We Came,” grapples with the community and violence queer kids of color face at NYC’s Christopher Street pier.
zora
Edited by Morgan Jerkins, “All Hail the Queen” is Junior’s personal essay that explores how Queen Latifah’s album, All Hail the Queen, amplified inner-city Black girl joy during the 1980s and 90s crack epidemic.
color bloq
In “The Buttahfly Effect,” published by Color Bloq, a digital mag for queer and trans people of color, Junior explores how inner-city Black sex workers influenced her queer, femme sensibilities.
gay mag
“No One Survives the Smoke,” published by Gay Mag—a partnership between Roxane Gay and Medium—and edited by Laura June Topolsky, is Junior’s braided essay about intergenerational crime trauma.
rigorous magazine
“Walk(wo)man” is Junior’s personal essay about music’s redemptive powers despite the ever-present carceral forces.
for harriet
At the height of #MeToo, For Harriet, the Black feminist digital magazine and community, published “Men Rape Us,” Junior’s personal essay about the dangers that lurked in a game room she frequented as a child.
the feminist wire
In “A Home of Our Own: Temporary Housing and LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence,” edited by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Junior writes about the scale and scope of intimate partner violence within the LGBTQ community.
nacole journal
In their review of Graham A. Rayman’s The NYPD Tapes, Junior writes about Graham’s investigation of widespread crime statistic manipulation, police officer intimidation, and corruption within the NYPD.
keep up with junior
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