Themes

Trauma Recovery: The Writing Cure

"I Want Out!": Draw Your Way Into A Life You Love

Stuck in Stasis: Why Can't I Get Out of This Job I Hate?

Sounding Board: Why It Is Important To Be Heard About Topics That Effect Your Life

ID Theft: Someone Keeps Stealing The Life I Imagine!

About

Niama Leslie Williams, a June 2006 Leeway Foundation Art and Social Change Grant recipient, and a 2006 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 fiction from the University of Southern California.

Dr. Williams has attended in 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 work in MindFire Renewed, P.A.W. (Philadelphia Artists Writers) Prints, Midnight Mind Magazine, Tattoo Highway #6, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, and Sojourner: The Women’s Forum. She has 6 titles available for sale on Lulu.com, an online print-on-demand publisher.

Dr. Williams hosts “Poetry & Prose & Anything Goes with Dr. Ni” Friday afternoons from 2-3 p.m. EST on BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com). Her short story “The Embrace” was selected for the 2006-2007 Writing Aloud series at the InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia, PA.

Her purpose for writing? "I tend not err on the side of caution in my writing; the purpose of it is to reach that one woman who has closed the door on her pain and put her hand back on the doorknob, willing to walk through whatever may be necessary."

Assets

Nineteen years of public speaking that began with little lunchtime gatherings in the university library at which I worked as a library assistant. The University Librarian attended and my department chair approved the room; my old high school speech and debate coach took a day off from School Board presidenting to hear my nascent prose and poetry.

I learned to welcome the silence following my words; my insecurity washed away by those who walked up afterwards, telling me that they had not clapped because they were still mulling over the startling things I had said.

People who grew up hating poetry love my lines; people who thought they were not supposed to engage with ideas find themselves discussing my metaphors and symbolism. I am the academic poet who reaches Willie Bobo on the street.

I bring to the speakers platform the understanding Sheniqua has of the world, and all that is arrayed against her. Yes, I have Ph.D. in hand, but I have used whatever resources at my disposal to GET that Ph.D.; thus I can touch the women who waste their afternoons in DPA offices across the country and around the world. I know how they are treated and I know how they chafe at that treatment.

I am also a poet and academic in love with the word. Humble and easily smitten, I wrap my arms around T. S. Eliot and Toni Cade Bambara with equivalent glee; I joke about Eliot's relentlessly paralyzed super-intellectual as easily as I recognize the boy men begging for money from their women in the grocery store that Bambara describes in THE SALT EATERS.

My mission one to share that joy in the word, to reveal the freedom within expressing your own brilliance, the liberation available via pen, paper, and a quiet afternoon.

Rave Reviews

My speaking engagements go back to 1989, and thus I will not list them here. However, I recently presented during International Women's Day Philadelphia at the request of Ms. Sherrie Cohen (sherriecohen@comcast.net) and Ms. Annette Owens (naesha@hotmail.com). Please feel free to contact them for references.

Ms. Maleka Fruean (maleka@bigbluemarblebooks.com) of Big Blue Marble Bookstore and Mr. Dan Gasiewski (dang@firstpersonarts.org) of First Person Arts can attest to the versatility, wit and agile mind at work when I stand in front of an audience.

Mr. Gregory Frost (gf@gregoryfrost.com), prize-winning science fiction author, can discuss my instructive abilities and the many ways in which I can entice comments from the most resistant and terrified undergraduate audiences.