Courtney M. McSwain
Writer, Narrative Organizer & Facilitator.
Courtney M. McSwain is a multi-passionate writer, narrative organizer and facilitator who works across creative and social movement disciplines toward individual and community liberation.
Meet Courtney
Courtney M. McSwain is a writer, narrative organizer and facilitator with over 20 years of experience working for social change and justice. She is the principal of NarrativeSeeds, a consultancy helping social justice organizations and networks build long-term, healing-centered narrative change. Courtney has worked across social change sectors and strategies, combining experience in research methods, policy analysis, strategic communications, narrative change strategy development and coalition building. Prior to NarrativeSeeds, Courtney served as the Director of Communications for the National Youth Justice Network (NYJN), where she evolved the organization’s communications work into a power and movement-building approach. In 2024, she was selected into the Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice Movement Leader Fellows program. Courtney holds a master’s degree in public policy from American University and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from N.C. A&T State University.
Courtney’s narrative practice and experimentation are influenced by the political and facilitative frameworks of abolition, healing justice, Emergent Strategy, and Black feminist thought. She roots herself in the lineage of Black women’s narrative practices, particularly the act of “self-defining” – or dismantling oppressive narratives through the agency of storytelling, as articulated by scholar Patricia Hill Collins. Courtney is forever inspired by, and returns often to work the work of, Nikki Giovanni, bell hooks and June Jordan. Courtney is grateful for every phase of her movement and creative life and looks forward to the ever-deepening journey of showing up for justice and liberation.
Projects
NarrativeSeeds
Courtney is the founder and principal of NarrativeSeeds – a consultancy that helps social justice organizations and networks build long-term, healing-centered narrative change. Using a narrative organizing approach, we help take narrative change strategies from idea to implementation through facilitation, coalition building, strategy co-design and/or project management.
AndThenITurned40.com
And Then I Turned 40 is a narrative blog on identity, love and re-imagining in mid-life.
“I believe there are many iterations of my purpose here on earth, and one of them is to dance through my days creating and making people feel things – making myself feel things. What could be more meaningful than that?”
Artist Statement
“Only the Black woman can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole negro race enters with me.”
~Anna Julia Cooper. Educator, Scholar & Activist.
I root myself in the lineage of Black women’s narrative practices, particularly the act of “self-defining” – or dismantling oppressive narratives through the agency of storytelling, as articulated by scholar Patricia Hill Collins. My creative and political thought were first shaped by the cannon of Black women’s writings I took in during my first year of college in 1998. At 18, I surrounded myself by the works of Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, bell hooks, Asha Bandele, June Jordon, Joan Morgan, Rebecca Walker, Lisa Jones, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde and so many others who were writing to Black women’s experiences as distinct and worthy of particular literary and cultural attention. But more than that, they were writing – imagining – themselves outside of the oppressive notions of Black womanhood held by others. They were defining “when and where” they entered for themselves, while leaving love letters for young Black women like me to find and develop our own narrative agency.
Today, my creative and political work is predicated on the belief that building narrative agency through creative, political and healing processes is critical to achieving a vision of freedom, abundance and justice that we deserve. For me, that belief started in the arms of Black women’s writings.