WILLIE MAE BROWN
left Alabama at the age of seventeen in 1970 to start a new life in Brooklyn, New York, where she worked for the New York Telephone Company until 2003. A visual artist as well as an author, Willie began writing stories about her childhood in 2012 and reading them in public in 2015. Known for infusing her personal narratives with the vernacular of her Southern upbringing, Brown has read at numerous public events including the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations at Brooklyn Borough Hall and many other special events across the city, her home state, and beyond.
Combining family stories of the everyday and the extraordinary, as seen through the eyes of her twelve-year-old self, Brown gives readers an unforgettable portrayal of her coming of age in a town at the crossroads of history in her first book, My Selma: True Stories of a Southern Childhood at the Height of the Civil Rights Movement, available January 2023.
My Selma captures the voice and vision of a fascinating young person—perspicacious, impetuous, resourceful, and even mystical in her ways of seeing the world around her—who gifts us with a loving portrayal of her hometown while also delivering a no-holds-barred indictment of the time and place.