Crafting the Audacity, One Work at a Time, a guest post by author Brittany N. Williams

I often talk about how my work as an actor feeds into my writing and vice versa. Even my first series, The Forge & Fracture Saga, is infused with theatre. This isn’t purely a blending of my two professions. It’s also how I became the writer and storyteller that I am today. My drama teachers and librarians growing up helped set stories in my bones but it was specifically my Black teachers and librarians who made sure I could write myself as a protagonist.

I attended three different schools as a child: a public, majority-Black elementary school; a Catholic, majority-Black middle school; and a Catholic, all-girls, majority-white high school. All three had incredible librarians who each had the uncanny ability to match a student with the right book at the perfect time with the unerring accuracy that the best school librarians seem to have. Their efforts alongside Baltimore’s “The City That Reads” campaign kept my voracious reading appetite well fed. Mrs. Sunday, my high school librarian, made our library feel like home and introduced me to Anne McCaffery’s Dragonriders of Pern and the only vampire novel I stan for, The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause. But, it was two Black women—Mrs. Barnett in middle school and my elementary school librarian (whose name I can’t remember though I’ll never forget her fabulously manicured nails)—who made sure I read books where I could find myself reflected in the pages.

My love of fairytales and myths was met by putting Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe and The Talking Eggs by Robert D. San Souci and Jerry Pinkney into my hands. I was introduced to Virginia Hamilton through Her Stories and The House of Dies Drear and committed the gorgeous, fantastical art of Leo and Diane Dillon eternally to memory. Coretta Scott King Award winners and honorees lined our library’s shelves so that distinction hung higher in my childhood esteem than any other literary prize. Their efforts assured me, without a doubt, that someone who looked like me could be the protagonist in any story. That belief held firm until I shifted from one of many among my classmates to one of few. That’s when my assurances came from a different angle, from the theatre.

In high school, I joined the Arena Players Youth Theatre program. It was hosted at the Arena Playhouse, the country’s oldest, continually running Black community theatre. Our director, Mr. Burton, believed we could do anything. We performed Pippin, Into the Woods, and The Best Christmas Pagent Ever, all pieces some would have trouble imagining with an all-Black cast. Beyond singing Sondheim and Schwartz with ease, we also wrote and crafted our own pieces. The most incredible show I’ve ever been in was a piece we helped shape with Mr. Burton for Black History Month called The Dark Before the Dawn. It was a choreopoem in the vein of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls… and made up of music, poetry, scenes, and dance separated into six themed parts. We got to skip school to perform it for other students and it bred two more similar shows including one we performed for a cultural exchange program in Rotterdam, Holland. The greatest gift Mr. Burton and the entire Arena Players staff gave us was a space to cultivate our artistry that was both deeply loving of Black people and Black American culture and dismissed the prejudices I was beginning to run into in less diverse spaces. “I could make you Cinderella,” Mr. Burton told me about casting our Into the Woods, “but that would be too easy.” Twenty-two years later, I’ll never forget that compliment.

One of the best things I can do for myself and my craft is to populate my shelves with things that inspire me. I keep aspirational works where writers spin magic with their prose in ways that I hope to achieve with my own future work. I hold onto inspirational pieces that trigger my imagination like my original script from The Dark Before the Dawn. And I collect the books that remind me of why I fell in love with reading, the books that I was introduced to as a child by those librarians. These all live fondly in my memory, so vivid and foundational that I seek them out in adulthood to keep them in my life and ground me in my artistry. I hold onto them to remind me of what I learned.

It’s a beautiful thing to create without the sense that you don’t belong. I wish I could say these lessons from my early days never wavered throughout my years as a creative but I cannot. Doubts often weigh more than surety and the world enthusiastically dumps them on Black children. What I can say is that each of those early lessons survived even if they were buried and found themselves pulled back to the surface by each new assurance that I, a queer Black woman, have every right to be the center of the story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Brittany N. Williams is a classically-trained actress who studied Musical Theatre at Howard University and Shakespearean performance at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in London. Previously she’s been a principal vocalist at Hong Kong Disneyland, a theatre professor at Coppin State University, and made appearances in Queen Sugar and Leverage: Redemption. Her short stories have been published in The Gambit Weekly, Fireside Magazine, and the Star Wars anthology From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back.

PRAISE FOR THAT SELF-SAME METAL

“GLORIOUS . . . STARRING A HEROINE YOU INSTANTLY ROOT FOR AND ADMIRE.” —The New York Times

“FAST-PACED AND FULL OF ENTHUSIASTIC LITTLE WINKS to real-life people and events, That Self-Same Metal offers a FRESH TAKE ON INCLUSIVE HISTORICAL FANTASY.” —NPR

“Williams weaves an INTRICATE, HISTORICALLY RICH TAPESTRY. Fans of Holly Black and Sarah J. Maas will love this start of a new series.” – School Library Journal, STARRED review

“The fighting, on stage and off, between Joan and the real-life counterparts of the Fae characters from Shakespeare’s plays is exciting. There’s been diligent research about the time period, politics, and faery folklore. Interesting characters offering BRILLIANT REPRESENTATIONS OF QUEERNESS AND SET IN A GLORIOUS FOUNDATION will pull readers in. PROMISING AND ORIGINAL.” — Kirkus

“In her debut, Williams has crafted an ADDICTING, ORIGINAL STORY that isn’t afraid to take risks. While the world is rooted in history and even boasts famous historical figures, the prominent Black and brown characters and exploration of queer love are a refreshing addition. With charming characters and surprising twists, this historical FANTASY WILL DELIGHT READERS OF ALL AGES.” —Booklist

“Full of nimble prose and wit as sharp as the blades on its pages, THIS BOOK IS NOTHING SHORT OF A SPECTACULAR DEBUT… I know that this is going to be a groundbreaking addition to the fantasy genre.” — Ayana Gray, New York Times-bestselling author Beasts of Prey

“EVERY SENTENCE OF THAT SELF-SAME METAL WILL THUNDER THROUGH YOUR BONES. Rich in place and time, with a steely protagonist at its center, I felt like I’d been spirited to another land and time.” — Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Gilded Wolves and Aru Shah

“WILDLY IMAGINATIVE AND REFRESHINGLY DIVERSE, Williams weaves a twisty Shakespearean-inspired fantasy taut with intrigue.” — J. Elle, New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Ebony

“Williams’ debut is an absolute feast of imagination. COMPLEX, BROODING, IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT DOWN.” — Scott Reintgen, bestselling author of A Door in the Dark

“Seamlessly weaves together history, fantasy, culture, magic, and love . . . I couldn’t stop reading it, and when I finished all I wanted was more. JOAN SANDS MAY BE A HERO IN ANOTHER ERA, BUT ALSO SHE’S THE ONE WE URGENTLY NEED IN BOOKS RIGHT NOW.” — Daniel José Older, New York Times bestselling author of Shadowshaper and Ballad & Dagger 

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