I spent some time on a special project last month that led me down memory lane – to the summer of 2023, when friends and family partnered with me to donate a literary step to Kenya Connect that featured the cover of my novel Watercolored Pearls.
This nonprofit based in a rural region of East Africa understands how fostering reading and literacy among youth and parents alike can uplift generations.
It was an honor to have the Watercolored Pearls step installed near book covers donated by my literary friends Kwame Alexander and Jerry Craft. Reflecting on the impact of giving youths daily exposure to books, and reading, lifted my hope.
As we enter this long holiday weekend, wherever you live in the world, I encourage you to visit your local library, bookstore or your own bookshelf and pick a book to read or re-read, while inspiring a young person in your life to do the same.
Reading can build knowledge and empathy, foster understanding and creativity, and ultimately, strengthen humanity.
They help you better understand yourself and others, and they help you make sense of the world in which we live.
Before this week ends, why not commit to reading some short fiction or a novel over the course of this month? Or pick up a memoir; perhaps a biography.
Read to laugh, weep, learn or grow.
Read to gain context, read to know.
Whether you choose some of my work or that of some of my fellow authors, enjoy, immerse yourself and reap the benefits of immersing yourself in stories, long after you’ve reached The End.
As summertime reading season kicks in, I’m excited to share that under the wonderful Carol Hill-Mackey’s leadership, Recorded Books has developed 4 of my 9 novels into audiobooks.
And just in time for the release of these audiobooks is the paperback reprinting of two of these novels –
Speak To My Heart, my first nationally published novel which centers on two women friends (and a teen) making life-changing decisions that could make them or break them,
and its sequel,
Nothing But the Right Thing, a book that explores the emotional and physical toll domestic violence takes on victims and those who seek to support them, and how the things we sometimes long for most can arrive in unexpected ways.
The third book in that series, Watercolored Pearls, has been in 2nd printing for a while (with a brown cover) and remains a reader favorite (thank you, my reading friends!). However, this novel, too, is now available wherever audiobooks are sold (with the original blue cover).
The fourth book now in an audible format? My novel Finding Home, which tells the story of an ambitious woman named Jessica, whose life careens out of control until she realizes she must find a home within herself or risk chasing illusions forever.
Please check them out – in print or audio! Listening samples are available on most audiobook platforms (and thank you to audiobook voice artists Susan Spain and Janina Edwards for doing a great job with each title).
As a dear friend recently declared: A book with compelling characters that explores still-relevant issues doesn’t have an expiration date. As you consider reading or re-reading my novels, or listening in the coming days and weeks, I hope you’ll find that to be true in these storylines.
(Side Note: Coming Home, one of my HarperCollins’ novels that preceded Finding Home, has been in print and audiobook form for years.)
While you’re reading or listening to these “Stacy classics,” I’ll be plugging away on my new manuscripts. My creative and inspirational endeavors flow in several lanes, yet completing my next few novels remains chief among my priorities.
A year ago in October, I independently published the tiniest book ever, in hopes that it would make a huge impact on its readers.
I purposely sized this single-poem chapbook (The Pivot) approximately 4×3 so it would fit in purses and pockets, to be carried along and read as needed in moments that call for encouragement.
I picked a specialty paper for printing, so that its readers would experience the book itself as a gift, featuring words of resolve they would be personally invited to live.
So Happy 1st anniversary to my first-ever published poem, The Pivot!
And thank you to readers across the nation who have shared how this poem has breathed life into you during challenging days and dared you to dream bigger on courageous ones.
Thanks to the event organizers who have purchased copies for your speaker and audience gifts and to the women who have ordered books for your sister circle retreats or as group-themed birthday presents.
Thanks to the owners of REDDJobb, an independent bookstore in Charlotte’s Carolina Place Mall for asking to keep copies on hand for your patrons and to the organizations that have invited me to deliver presentations on its themes.
To readers everywhere who have endorsed the book, thank you for sharing with me how the poem has personally impacted you. Sometimes when our own words escape us, those penned by others can carry the message our hearts long to convey.
Because of its specialty design, The Pivot is only available through my website (rather than the usual online retailers) at StacyHawkinsAdams.com.
This may keep me from making faster sales; however, for now, it feels right to personalize the experience as a self-care gift as much as possible. If Hallmark or another publishing entity wants to help strategically scale it, call me!
For now, I simply say thank you!! I am grateful to be the muse and the steward for this beacon of hope, in book form.
Stacy Hawkins Adams’ poem, The Pivot
These readers of The Pivot received it as a gift!
One reader of The Pivot includes it in her morning devotions.
NYT bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby endorsed The Pivot.
I’ve been exercising my creative juices for the past month on a small, but special project that I’m excited to share with you soon.
What I’ve loved as much as the process of refining the words and getting the aesthetics just right (with a gifted artistic partner) are the friends and fam who have offered feedback and edits, burned the midnight oil with me to ensure that I create in excellence, and reminded me that as “Ms. #LifeUntapped” not only CAN I think and move outside the creative box of titles and genres, I betta!
This is what rising together takes.
Iron sharpens iron.
Vision multiplies vision.
Shoulders lower so you can climb aboard.
What matters most is the art itself.
There’s a tired-but-happy place feeling that centers you as you’re producing it, and eventually the joy that comes with hearing readers express renewed hope or joy or value after experiencing your words.
More to come on this project in early October. In the meantime, thank you to my tribe! When it’s your turn, the rising, sharpening, encouragement and lowered-shoulder moments will come full circle.
During my childhood summers in Arkansas, my older sister Sandra would take my nieces and me to the public library every two weeks to check out books, and I would excitedly borrow as many as possible and finish them all before the next visit.
Books stretched my imagination and took me around the world back then, and for many years I’ve supported adult and youth literacy programs in Richmond and nationwide. (Shoutout to The Read Center and to Reach Out and Read.)
Yet, it felt like a full circle moment this past summer to help champion reading on the other side of the globe with a likeminded tribe of friends.
Thank you to my journalist friend Shelby Brown with WTVR CBS 6 for sharing my experience in Kenya with viewers on #NationalReadABookDay.
I write fiction and nonfiction to empower women, but I care just as deeply about advocating for children. So when my award-winning author friend Kwame Alexander invited me and others to accompany him to the Motherland to foster literacy in a couple of rural villages (and fit in a safari), this was one of those quick “yes” moments – Kenya, here I come!
We visited from June 30 – July 8, and I am still basking in the afterglow of having traveled with 20 amazing writers, librarians and teachers (and their children or partners) who care about reading, writing and the transformative power of education.
I was thrilled to read to these preschool students in Wamunyu, Kenya
I traveled with award-winning authors Kwame Alexander (right) and Jerry Craft (left)
Our U.S. group of authors, teachers, librarians, and the friends and family who accompanied us to Kenya.
It was an honor to nurture these gifts in the several hundred school children our group met through the nonprofit Kenya Connect, which serves students and families in 60-plus rural schools, and to meet with librarians and teachers to brainstorm next-level ways to engage these young learners and parents.
My takeaways from this trip?
There are many! I’m still processing the life lessons, and my creative juices are flowing, but here are a few immediate nuggets:
1. Be present in each moment.
Getting an opportunity to dance with village women one day and members of the Maasai tribe on another;
inspire schoolchildren,
sign and giveaway copies of my books,
wake up to the sounds of hippos and elephants grazing near my glammed-up tent, see those and numerous other animals in their natural habitat (including a leopard and cheetah and hundreds of zebra migrating to Maasai Mara) while bonding with my amazing fellow travelers? Priceless and Unforgettable.
2 Don’t postpone joy.
When you can, say yes to opportunities and experiences and delight yourself in something new. You may not be able to travel the globe, yet there are other ways you can expand your mind, give back and grow.
3. Find inspiration all around you.
The proverbial icing on this experience for me was sitting at dinner one evening listening to Kwame and his dear friend and fellow New York Times bestselling author Jerry Craft trade ideas based on our adventures, while I independently brainstormed new threads for my novel-in-progress.
These two authors and the other writers in our group offered one another helpful doses of motivation to keep going, dream bigger and celebrate our stories as well as those of the people we encountered.
Ultimately, the sharing and educating that occurred during this trip were mutually enriching. May we Americans have left our friends in Africa as full of the hope and appreciation for collaboration that they gifted to us.
I loved reading to these attentive students!
This sweet girl clung to me and the delight was mutual!
I gifted a copy of my women’s fiction novel The Someday List to Nada!
Esther, the librarian for Kenya Connect, was delighted to receive a copy of Watercolored Pearls.
I bought many baskets from village women in rural Kenya, including the one made by Elizabeth, which she is holding.
Preparing to leave Nairobi for the Massai Mara desert.
Some of my travel companions and I preparing for Day 2 of our safari.
One of the many animals we saw close up!
Seeing the animals, like this elephant, in their natural habitat, was breathtaking.
One of the Massai tribe women, who sold me jewelry.
We all took turns posing in this beautiful tree!
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We’re 6 days away from what I’m believing will be another God-kissed “Still We Rise: Celebrating the Power of Women’s Stories” inspirational brunch, and
while many of you can’t join me in person, perhaps you can spend a few minutes with your family or a circle of friends replicating this brief storytelling exercise that my friend Maya Smart guided guests through during my 2014 brunch.
If you participate, be sure to answer with “who” you are, not what you do.
Fast forward to today and you’ll discover with a quick Google search that Maya is a brand new yet already renowned author.
I salute her on this countdown to brunch number 2 by describing her with this one word: Amazing.
Maya Smart, author of the nonfiction book, “Reading For Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six”
In about three weeks, a group of amazing women (and one gentleman) will join me in gracing the stage at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden to pour from our hearts and inspire everyone present to embrace their journeys and value others’ stories, too.
My co-organizers and I met for two hours this morn to discuss the final details (and to settle my nerves!), and I left that Zoom session all the more excited about what we’re birthing.
So although my October 22 inspirational brunch is sold out, as often as I can throughout this month, I’ll share some timeless inspiration from my 2014 brunch that can still offer encouragement and hope.
Today’s offering is the keynote message I shared in 2014 with brunch attendees, and I share it again, because it’s all still true:
Words hold power.
Fiction and nonfiction can tranform lives.
I am honored to be a vessel.
I continue to write forward – not necessarily at my pace, but at the one that is ordained for me.
What an honor it is to partner with Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden to revive an event that brought together women from all walks of life to hear and share stories and celebrate one another – especially as we’re coming out of the pandemic and still grappling with so much.
Introducing… the 2022 version of my inspirational brunch for women – Still We Rise: Celebrating the Power of Women’s Stories.
If you’re in or near Central Virginia (or if you can get here), I hope you’ll join me and my amazing lineup of presenters on October 22! You won’t leave the same.
Still Unfolding with Stacy Hawkins Adams 