About Avril … About SomerEmpress

Author Bio

Among her favorite authors are Gloria Naylor, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Walter Mosley, Elizabeth Nuñez, J. California Cooper, Paule Marshall, Daniel Black, Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward. Born in the Commonwealth of Dominica, Avril is a first-generation college graduate of Swarthmore College, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, and of Pennsylvania State University, where she earned her Master of Business Administration. She lives with her family in Pennsylvania. Her debut novel is forthcoming.

An Origin Story: The Name

SomerEmpress began as a blog, Life As An Art Form: Quips and Commentaries in Prose and Poetry, a space where Somerville showed up honestly and on her own terms. Somer is an endearing abbreviation for Somerville. Empress arrived as a gift from her brother, a practicing Rastafarian, with a deep reverence for the once Empress Taytu Betul of Ethiopia. The title of Empress conveys regality, power, and queenship, so it was divine alignment when Somerville decided to build a publishing house that would center Black women writers with powerful stories to tell. Moreover, the word “press” had already lived inside the Empress, further fueling Somerville’s creative imperative to write and share publicly, granting permission to those seeking to preserve their voice while doing the same.

Press: as in a printing or publication press; as in “any of various pressure devices (such as one for keeping something from warping)”

The Gift Within: The Writer

Between being someone’s momma, wife, employee, and amid the busyness of doing, the writer who finds this space feels something deep within herself, something aching for release and begging to be shared, and yearns to carve a literary home for herself that does not require her to become anything other than what she desires to be in a landscape cluttered with content creators and littered with literary icons. She recognizes this urgency in the quiet moments, in her domestic life, in the seemingly mundane, in the synchronicity of encounters and conversations, and understands the deep self-work required to achieve her own breakthroughs and aid her healing and becoming. It is an imbuing of spirit, if you will. An overwhelm that just won’t let her be, no matter how many hats she’s wearing at any given moment or the earthly titles she holds. Without a doubt, she knows her story deserves to live on the page as ready-made medicine for her retrieval and others’, and to be added to the canon of Black writers she is influenced by and deeply admires.

First Things First: The Work

Avril Somerville published SomerEmpress Publishing, Inc.’s first book, A Journey of Life on Purpose, a collection of personal essays and poetry exploring community, race, identity, love, womanhood, and creativity, because she believed her voice deserved a home while still in the first editing stages of her novel at the time. Though she still had hopes of her debut novel being accepted by a Big 5 traditional publisher, waiting for the industry to validate her work contradicted everything she had encouraged other writers to believe—that writers hold the authority to legitimize their own work, and that being courageous first meant taking that big bet on yourself. So Somerville built and incorporated SomerEmpress Publishing, published A Journey of Life on Purpose, and claimed her rightful place in the public literary conversation.

Her blog, reflecting years of similarly themed writing, laid the foundation for everything SomerEmpress represents. Whether poetry, essays, short stories, plays, memoirs, novels, or affirmations, Somerville’s work is anything but conventional because everything she writes is divinely timed, Spirit-led, ancestrally guided, and incapable of being housed in a single container or genre.

Expanding the Canon: The Press

Ultimately, SomerEmpress Publishing, Inc. returns agency to the writer and stands in the gap.

Inarguably, the power of the traditional publishing industry is concentrated in a few hands that have historically misread, undervalued, and underrepresented the diversity of Black literary voices—writers without MFA degrees, writers who may have never participated in workshop circles, writers who never considered or don’t desire submitting their work to literary magazines, writers who stand outside rooms where gatekeepers gather with seemingly “good intentions.” By default, “good” becomes defined chiefly by what the industry is familiar with and what they believe people should read. Writers aligned with SomerEmpress are writers with powerful stories but little access and/or know-how about the “literary landscape” or publishing; these writers, though unpublished, have creative desires and urgent stories that are often dwarfed by more pressing priorities at any given moment.

Consequently, SomerEmpress Publishing walks alongside its writers, coaching them to craft a mission that keeps them whole, while asserting their voice as the powerfully transformative force it is, especially now, when the threat of erasure is hardly a perception, when that voice matters most. We encourage our writers to design their writing experiences, create their own conventions, and write like their life depends on it. “Tell it like you wish to tell it,” we tell them, then we give them the space and tools to do precisely that.

We know we are answered prayer, and as such, we take our mission seriously. In turn, we lovingly affirm and regard our writers because only they know the story they need to tell. Ultimately, we are committed to writing and publishing that stories that liberate us in any and every form the gift demands.

Build It, They’ll Come: The Vision

In five years, SomerEmpress Publishing will carry a catalog that expands the shelf of what Black literature looks like—preserving voices, honoring forms, and building trust and community for writers who carry powerful stories and need a home worthy and built precisely for them. That catalog includes Black women writing their fullest selves, and Black men whose stories deserve the same loving care, dignity, and stewardship.