Seshat Yon’shea

WRITER. CREATIVE. FOUNDER.

Seshat Yon’shea Walker is a certified country gurl raised on the Eastern shore. She is also a writer, multidisciplinary creative, and founder.

Writing has always been Seshat’s greatest form of communication and creative asset. In college she utilized written and spoken word poetry as a source of therapy, and later as a news writer and playwright, it has been the vehicle through which she shares the truth – hers and others. While she’s navigated many paths and discovered various skills; writing reflects Seshat’s most authentic self. Whether through poetry, plays, or news stories, she writes to create things, worlds, and opportunities that are engaging, inclusive, and future-forward. As a storyteller she looks to craft, tell and share the uncomfortable, complex and impactful stories, with each providing a unique perspective. Seshat has found the need to create more complex stories about and for Black women tapping into those untold and taboo narratives that exist as well, in order to share them with an even wider audience.

She aspires to write about the magic and beauty in the seemingly mundane, everyday experiences; specifically, with regard to the lives of Black women. Seshat is passionate about using this vehicle to influence, inspire and impact culture; to move the audience to a space of empathy and hopefully to actually care about the “other”. Additionally Seshat’s approach to theatre is to move beyond the stage. Her education in human centered design coupled with her ten plus years of experience as a cultural worker has given her a unique perspective in creating site specific dramatic experiences.

When taking on the mantle of writer or griot, (via cultural assignment) the onus, Seshat believes, is to simplify yet push the form; to dream up an intricate cast of protagonists who compel, question, poke fun, and stir things within all of us to do better for ourselves and in turn to do better for humanity.

Seshat’s creative work has been presented at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, the Anacostia Arts Center Black Box Theatre, Two Strikes Theatre Collective, DC Public Library and DC Arts Center. Seshat's poetry has been featured in Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (2009), Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces(2006) The Hoot & Holler of the Owls (2003), and her self-published chapbook Locale (2000).

Seshat is the recipient of the following awards: The 2021 Awesome Foundation Awesome Champion, A 2019 DC Arts & Humanities Fellowship Award , 2019 TribeFest DC Impact Award, The NEXTDOOR Great Neighbor Award, Diverse City Fund Grantee, Innovation Slam Finalist at the Plunge Creativity and Culture sponsored by Film Life Inc. and Black Enterprise. She is co-producer of the short doc INNERSECTIONS which received official selections in the Africa World Film Festival and Filmteenth International Film Festival.

She has designed creative strategy and freshly innovative projects for the Smithsonian, The Halcyon Arts Lab, DC Public Library, Washington Performing Arts Society, The DC Commission of the Arts & Humanities, WACIF, DSLBD, and more. Seshat received her MFA in Design Management from SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design) and her BA in Journalism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Seshat is founder of aSHE Fund which supports Black women creatives in the DMV.

She in the member of APAP, Black Film Space and The Dramatists Guild of America.