Chris Abani. Barry Manilow. Wynton Marsalis. Jerry Quickley. Jody Kuykendall. The already famous and the one on her way up. Articles in the newspaper, paparazzi bait, sought out for the alumni newsletter, for international halls of fame, for Pulitzers, Emmys, Grammys; recipients of some, winners of many. But what of the poet, toiling away in her room, alone, who watches, understands, yet never feels a part of their world? What of the poet who watches their performances, sees beneath their words, their music, imagines the pain that created the art, uses her understanding to convince herself to, yes, live one more day, but that one day, that particular day, makes another choice?
BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT
Niama Leslie Williams, 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. Having left Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after a devoted 15 years, Dr. Williams now resides in Long Beach, California.
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 11 titles available for sale on her website: http://www.blowingupbarriers.com/drnismemoirs.html.
Her short story "The Embrace" was selected for the 2006-2007 Writing Aloud series at the InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia, PA, and her poem "Myself As Water" earned second place in the EcoPoetry Greenfest Philly 2008 contest.
Dr. Williams' radio show, "Poetry & Prose & Anything Goes with Dr. Ni" (www.blogtalkradio.com/drni) is currently on hiatus; normally, she interviews authors about their writing lives and deepest secrets and business owners about the spiritual aspects of their entrepreneurship. 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.
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."
