Our Honey.
Our Foundation.
SeaSalted Honey began with a call.
In early 2022, Nicole Shawan Junior began receiving spiritual downloads to return to Mother Afrika. The messages were clear, “Go to Dakar!” The downloads flooded their dreamscape, landed in their ears through overheard conversations, and followed them across the country to the soft opening of a spanking new restaurant they had no idea they’d stumble into: DakarNOLA.
In January 2023, Nicole found themself in the electric bustle of Dakar’s dusty streets, boating along Lat Retba and, later, meditating on La Petite Côt’se gold sands. They wrote + wrote + wrote. They wrote because they could breathe. They wrote because they were just one amongst a majority of Black folk. They wrote on the western coast of Mother Afrika because they found a creative charge like none they’d ever experienced, and a profound community of care.
On Gorée Island, though, Nicole observed the continued prevalence of whiteness and white supremacy in Afrika. At the Door of No Return, white American and European tourists snapped photos and hot-footed through each human cage without the proper reverence owed. Nicole was unable to reconcile how white people continued to show up at slave ports and continued to demean Mother Afrika’s beauty and energetic power. At the Door of No Return, Nicole felt (more than realized) the need for Black Americans to step foot on, root our heels in, and be spiritually bathed by our Homeland.
In the US, Nicole had already founded, built + led Roots. Wounds. Words.—a literary arts revolution for BIPOC writers. They also supported the development of retreat + residency spaces for Lambda Literary, VONA, and other national organizations that support invisibilized artists.
Now was the time for Nicole to bring their life’s work + kinfolk to our Homeland + Blacklands across the globe. It was time for her to make Afrika accessible + familial to its stolen, displaced children.
SeaSalted Honey + its Sojourns of Return were born.
Our Team.
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Nicole Shawan Junior (they/them) is the founder of Roots. Wounds. Words., Deputy Director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America, and former editor-in-chief of Black Femme Collective. Nicole has guest edited for The Rumpus as well as served on the editorial teams at Women’s Studies Quarterly of The Feminist Press, SLICE Magazine, and more. Nicole curated Raising Mothers' limited Justice Involved Mothers column, which was penned by formerly incarcerated Black women. Nicole’s writing appears in Oprah Daily, Guernica, Zora, Gay Mag, The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere.
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Dakar native Abdoul L’Ahad is a musician who enjoys singing, playing the guitar, and producing hip-hop tracks for Senegalese rappers. A father and husband, family is important to Abdoul. Abdoul is a SeaSalted Honey guide.
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Yatou + Sadio are the dynamic mother-and-daughter duo who help keep things delicious. Yatou is SeaSalted Honey’s Dakar chef and Sadio is her souz chef.
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Saint-Louis, Senegal native, Elhadj Gueye is a photographer who enjoys capturing the people and landscapes of his beloved Senegal. Currently based in La Petite Côte, El Hadj is a SeaSalted Honey guide.