Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She earned an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. She is currently the executive director at Cave Canem, the 2018-2019 Doris Lippman Visiting Poet at The City College of New York, a visiting professor at Boston University, and a 2019-2020 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.