About Avril … About SomerEmpress

Author Bio

Some of my 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. I am a Black woman born in the Commonwealth of Dominica and living in the United States. I am a proud first-generation graduate and English Lit major of Swarthmore College and graduated from The Smeal College MBA Program at Pennsylvania State University. I live just outside of Philadelphia with my beautiful family, and I am ecstatic about the forthcoming release of my debut novel this coming spring!

In the Beginning

Every story begins with one word. SomerEmpress dot com began as a blog, Life As An Art Form: Quips and Commentaries in Prose and Poetry, a space where I first showed up as a wife, mother, and community activist. Here, I mined my life, recorded my observations, bore witness, and reflected deeply on questions that confounded me and nurtured my curiosity on and off the page. Ultimately, I was compelled by a deep need to understand how we could activate our highest good and offer our beautiful gifts to transform our lives, our communities, and the world. Somer is an abbreviation for my last name, Somerville. I think it has a nice ring to it. Empress is the title with which my Rastafarian brother greets me every time we speak. It reminds me of my regality, my power, and my big queen energy, once I am earnestly tapped in. There is divine alignment in the name, SomerEmpress, one I don’t take lightly. Who knew I would one day found an independent micro press and platform that aims to center Black women writers with powerful stories to tell?

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

Answering the Call

Like me, a woman who wears many hats—momma, wife, worker, creative, supporter of many, and change agent—the woman who finds this space feels a stirring within her that calls her to write her life. Whether the revelations come while she is cleaning her home, cooking for herself or for her family, reflecting while sitting at the stoplight, or waiting for a bus or rideshare, she catalogs her observations, musings, and convictions as divinely afforded even while on the go. This dynamic woman isn’t interested in performing or conforming because life outside of her limited safe spaces and quietude already requires enough theatrics just for her to survive. What this woman craves is authentic community with other writers who neither compete with one another, nor perceive themselves as authoritative voices on how one should write. In this community, women root for each other’s absolute best because they understand, even honor, the healing that comes with each woman’s release.

This woman is already validated and needs no confirmation of her call to write because she is committed to, and has invested in, the deep self-work required to break through, heal, and become her highest self. That stirring in her belly is an invocation of Spirit, sufficient confirmation that no matter how many hats she wears at any given moment or the illustriousness of the earthly titles she holds, her story deserves a life in words on the page because this is the same medium through which she has also found some of her most effective healing medicine along her journey of becoming. And so it is, she is ready to take up space within the canon of Black writers she’s long held in deep regard.

I am her.

A Journeying of Self-Validation

In 2015, I betted on myself by creating my own publishing imprint, SomerEmpress Publishing, Inc, and publishing my personal essays and poetry in A Journey of Life on Purpose. This courageous move was a demonstration of my belief that I am the only who has the authority to legitimize my voice. For me, waiting for acceptance from a “traditional” publisher was akin to seeking permission, which bristled against everything I encouraged other writers to not do. This was also a convenient move while I was still in the first round of editing my novel.

Expanding the Canon

Ultimately, the mission of SomerEmpress Publishing, Inc is to return agency to the writer and stand in the gap for emerging Black literary voices.

We understand that 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. Not all of us have or desire MFA degrees. Some of us may have never participated in workshop circles or submitted our work to literary magazines. We are neither imposters nor will we pine for anyone’s attention or clamor outside doors of gatekeepers who insist they have “good intentions,” yet continue to publish only a dismal number of Black authors every year … until a pandemic precludes them from looking away at the startling data from The New York Times. Too often, good is limited to what the industry believes is good and what its decisionmakers read. Networked and notable names, proven players, and familiar faces. Writers aligned with SomerEmpress Publishing, Inc, on the other hand, are writers whose stories we already value. This space is created precisely with these writers in mind.

Though unpublished, these writers have creative desires and urgent stories that are often dwarfed by more pressing priorities along their hierarchy of needs at any given moment.

Consequently, SomerEmpress Publishing, Inc walks alongside its writers, coaching them to craft a vision for themselves 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 the creation and preservation of our stories matter 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 only you can tell it,” we tell them, then we give them the tools to do precisely that.

Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize

This is a matter of legacy. Like Toni at Random, SomerEmpress Publishing, Inc is committed to the vitality and survival of our stories, the wellness of our writers, and the expansion of the canon of Black literature. We intend to get there through ongoing and thoughtful examination, study, and preservation of the work that has come before us and the stewardship of new voices with dignity and tender care. We don’t take being entrusted to someone’s story and call to write lightly; therefore, our first priority is to affirm our writers as writers, their stories as significant, then publish literature that centers, celebrates, and liberates us in any and every form our gifts demand.