Look and Listen

Biography

Niama Leslie Williams (http://www.blowingupbarriers.com), a June 2006 Leeway Foundation Art and Social Change Grant recipient, and a 2006 (July) participant in a Sable Literary Magazine/Arvon Foundation residential course in Shropshire, UK, possesses a doctorate in African American literature from Temple University, a bachelor’s in comparative literature from Occidental College, and a master’s in professional writing from the University of Southern California. Dr. Williams’ master’s thesis at USC earned her an honorable mention in the University’s 1991 Phi Kappa Phi competition. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, she currently resides in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Dr. Williams has participated in several writers’ conferences, including the Squaw Valley Community of Writers (2000), Hurston/Wright Writers Week (1996), and Flight of the Mind (1993). Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers Magazine; Dark Eros: Black Erotic Writings; Spirit & Flame: An Anthology of African American Poetry; Catch the Fire: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry; Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century; Mischief, Caprice, and Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press); A Deeper Shade of Sex: The Best in Black Erotica, and Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees. Check the Rhyme was nominated for an NAACP Image Award (2007). Her prose publications include essays and short stories in MindFire Renewed, P.A.W. (Philadelphia Artists Writers) Prints, Midnight Mind Magazine, Amateur Computerist, Tattoo Highway #6, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, and Sojourner: The Women’s Forum. She has 7 titles available for sale on Lulu.com (http://stores.lulu.com/drni), an online print-on-demand publisher based in the U.K. Dr. Williams hosts “Poetry & Prose & Anything Goes with Dr. Ni” Monday evenings from 6-7 p.m. EST on BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com). The show originally aired from February to April of 2007 on Passionate Internet Voices Talk Radio, a station owned by Ms. Lillian Cauldwell of Ann Arbor, MI. Her newsletter rather sporadically appears at http://drnisnotesandnibbles.blogspot.com/. Her short story “The Embrace” was selected for the 2006-2007 Writing Aloud series at the InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia, PA. Of her purpose for writing Dr. Williams says: "I frequently do not err on the side of caution in my writing, but I believe in the purpose of it: to speak to the things others do not want to speak of, with the hopes of reaching that one woman, or her lover, or her friend, who refuses to deal with her pain, who hides from it, who doesn't think she'll survive it. That's the audience I hope to reach."

Inspiration

WRITERS GAZETTE INTERVIEW APRIL 2007 An Interview with Dr. Niama L. Williams Tell us a bit about yourself. What would you like us to know about you? I love literature and I love teaching literature. I love reading and bookstores are THE most dangerous places for my checkbook and debit card. My favorite authors span gender, race, and country: Toni Cade Bambara, Kate Braverman, T. S. Eliot, John Edgar Wideman, Andre Dubus (House of Sand & Fog), Mark Doty, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye) … I could go on. Second only to my passion for literature is my love of film and television. My favorite quote from my many ears as a child in front of the television comes from Kung Fu, and is spoken by the lead character, Kwai Chang Caine: “The fear becomes a body inside your own body. You believe if you face the fear, you will die, but no, it is THE FEAR that will die.” The list of favorite films is equally eclectic: Magnolia, Prince of Tides, Beloved, The Magnificent Seven (the original with Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner), The Thomas Crown Affair (with Steve McQueen), My Fair Lady, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, and absolutely anything written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia. Speaking of the Latin American quotient, how could I forget Luisa Valenzuela, my favorite South of the border author, Jorge Luis Borges, Ariel Dorfman, and my favorite Latin American novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz? The only thing that could make me happier than a new book or a Vincent D’Onofrio Criminal Intent marathon would be tickets to a really good play or dance performance. Or somehow getting Mark Doty and Wanda Coleman to agree to be interviewed on my radio show. What are you doing now? (Career? Married? Single? Children? Pets?) Looking for funding for my business, Blowing Up Barriers Enterprises; doing my radio show, “Poetry & Prose & Anything Goes with Dr. Ni” on Passionate Internet Voices Talk Radio (www.internetvoicesradio.com); telling everyone possible about my 6 books on Lulu.com, giving poetry and prose readings when asked, and working on novel number three, which should be completed by the end of August 2007. What is your favourite food? Mexican food, hands down. The cheesier, the meatier, the better. Chicken enchiladas, chimichangas, taco salads, and the absolute best: warm tamales fresh from the corn husk wrapping. YUM!!!!! The best Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles as far as I was concerned was Margarita’s on Crenshaw Boulevard within walking distance of Crenshaw High. Ah, the memories! What is your favourite colour? Red. I love to wear red, I love to see red, and I thought the wonderful little Asian guy on Top Design was hugely wronged for not winning the challenge with his red luxury hotel suite. Second only to red is peach, then beige. Why can’t large size women find peach tops all throughout the year? Peach is NOT only for summer! What is your favourite sound? Barry Manilow at the piano singing one of his old, sad ballads: “Say the Words,” or “Woncha Tell Me What’sa a Nice Boy Like Me,” or “Could It Be Magic,” or “All the Time,” or “Sunday Father and Son.” If Barry’s not available, give me some Billy Joel singing “James” or the song about Saigon or “Piano Man” even. The only one who could knock Billy off his pedestal would be Sting singing the song about Chile. Ah!!!! Who is your favourite person? Toni Cade Bambara, hands down. I hate the fact that she is dead. I wish I had worked harder at getting to know her before she died. Her novel, The Salt Eaters, is the best piece of fiction I have ever read. Opportunity missed!!!! What is your favourite place? South Shropshire, United Kingdom. What is your favourite memory? The warm, 4-layer devil’s food cakes my grandmother used to make for our birthdays. They were such a symbol of her love and devotion to me and my brothers. She loved us unconditionally and without end, and I have yet to find a love as durable or soothing. What is your favourite article of clothing? My ankle length, white with pink and blue tiny flowers cotton flannel nightgown. Comfortable and cozy any time of the year. What is your favourite word? Mama. My mother died in 2003 and I would give my eyeteeth to have her back for just one more hour, day, year … What is your favourite writers’ quote and why? “The artist’s job is to hold complexities”—a condensation of a quote from the preface to Tender by Toi Derricotte. What is your most favourite quality about yourself? I love to talk and I love to listen. I love to make people feel more comfortable, more in love with who they are. I love to have dinner parties and feed people good, solid, homemade, healthy food. I love spoiling those I love. I love giving gifts and watching people’s faces as they open them. I love writing poems for people who would never imagine themselves the subject of a poem. I love honoring the ordinary and making of it something majestic. What is the least favourite quality about yourself? When God was handing out patience, He did so at 8 a.m. and I sleep til noon. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would it be and why? To South Shropshire, United Kingdom, to stay. I have only been there once, but the very soil in that area seeped in through my feet, coursed up through my body all the way to my head, changing my body and brain chemistry for the better all the way up. I felt at home there in a way I have felt nowhere else on the planet. I was healed there and every cell in my body aches to return. What inspires you to write and why? God gives me my gift on a daily basis and I struggle daily to honor His gift and do with it what He would prefer. My original purpose as a writer was fourfold: ---to share my story in the hopes that someone would read my work and say: oh my God, I am not alone; someone else feels this ---or, oh my God, someone else has been through this; it IS survivable and they are showing me how ---or, okay, this is live throughable; this experience does not have to kill me because it did not kill her. ---I wanted people to read my work and spare themselves some pain, or the making of certain mistakes. If I can circumvent someone’s suffering with my work, then I have done all that I came to the planet, this incarnation, to do. What is your favourite book and why? The Salt Eaters, hands down, because the telling of the story is an echo of the way I write fiction and nonfiction: chaotic, rambling, switching from consciousness to consciousness with very few clues. I feel as though I discovered The Salt Eaters when I did to let myself know that my style was okay, was acceptable, had been done before by the best. Toni Cade, thank you! What is your favourite genre and why? Drama without a doubt. I grew up in a home filled with daily tension and precarious minefields at every turn. I am used to a certain shorthand of fear, conflict, confrontation. Dramatic tension between characters, well-developed characters, sadly, reminds me of home. Is familiar. List your three favourite authors (any genre) and why? Toni Cade Bambara—because she has the brilliance to ask the question of her lead character: “do you want to be well?” John Edgar Wideman—because in Damballah he gives us the quintessential African American family novel Luisa Valenzuela—because she writes of the unspeakable, of the unspeakable that man does to man and to woman and makes us turn toward the horror to be with those suffering and in the midst of it all, in the midst of the worst of it, does not forget humor Kate Braverman—she understands the heavy, weighted air of Los Angeles like no one else. What do you think makes a writer successful? Perseverance. Tenacity. Sticktoititiveness. A supportive community that will be there for him or her no matter what. Mentors who are unafraid to be loving, caring, gentle. Publication. Notoriety. Fame and MONEY. The importance of MONEY, of the ability to support oneself BEFORE one becomes hugely successful cannot be overrated. What is it that makes you successful as a writer? I don’t give up. Period. What are your goals as a writer? I want my books to SELL. What is the best tip you can give to fellow writers? Study your craft. Know the rules of grammar, mechanics and spelling and USE THEM. What do you hope to provide your readers with through your writing? Hope. Sanity. A way out of, a way to survive, the horror. List your three favourite online writer-resource sites and why (include URLS). A Word A Day—it provides the little stories of words and is compellingly and engagingly informative. The quotes of the day embedded in the Word A Day listings are always pithy and compelling as well. AuthorsDen.com—free publicity for authors and it gives one a great platform from which to sell one’s titles. M-W.com—Merriam Webster Online—no writer in this day and age can get by without a reliable online dictionary. If you have a published a book, tell us about your publishing success (title, publishing date and company, where it is available to purchase). All of my titles are available through my Lulu.com storefront: stores.lulu.com/drni. The titles are: THE JOURNEY—a collection of short stories/memoir about graduate school, second sight, and a young Black girl’s love for a psychiatrist. DETECTIVE FICTION—sequel to The Journey which wraps up the tale of the young, second-sighted Black girl and the drop-dead gorgeous white psychiatrist. STEVEN—a collection of poems indicting Hollywood’s shortsightedness and damaging stereotypes. FAMOUS FACES—dealing with race across genders and genres, a collection of poems specifying the influence of people famous and not on an ordinary Ph.D. SOUL WORK—poems about and for the people who have led and assisted my spiritual journeys. BLACK POETIC FEMINISM: THE IMAGINATION OF TOI DERRICOTTE—analysis of Derricotte’s four books of poetry in terms of tracking her emergence and claiming of voice. All titles published in 2007. How long did it take you to write your book(s)? 15 years. What would do differently if you could repeat the same publishing experience? I would have done it much, much earlier and when I had more money to promote and advertise. What have you learned about the publishing world? That I want IN. I want SUCCESS. I want to be a household name and am unafraid to say so. I want to earn the right to follow Toni Cade, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker and Wanda Coleman. This is your chance to ‘Talk Back’ to your readers. What would you like to say to them? Take my words and handle them carefully; they have been besieged by fire and burned with the acid of others’ disregard. They want to love you; they want to embrace you, but they are gun-shy, having been rejected and unloved by so many for so long. Treat them kindly and they will be there for you on those long, cold nights when the world has left you bereft. What’s the one thing that you want them to know about your writing? That there is blood on the page. That it cost to put those words to print. That there was no other choice, and that is as it should be for all serious writers.