Tamara Winfrey-Harris
#HaveYouHerd: Today’s #FridayFeature is someone whose books have taken us on many adventures, Tamara Winfrey-Harris. Tamara is not only the Vice President of Community Leadership and Effective Philanthropy for Central Indiana Community Foundation, but she is also a nationally renowned writer and speaker. To learn more about Tamara and her adventures, keep reading.
Tamara Winfrey-Harris serves CICF as Vice President of Community Leadership and Effective Philanthropy. CICF’s mission is To mobilize people, ideas and investments to make this a community where all individuals have equitable opportunity to reach their full potential—no matter place, race or identity.
What many people may not realize is that Tamara is a nationally renowned writer and speaker who specializes in the intersection of race and gender with politics, pop culture and current events. She has published two books: The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America and Dear Black Girl: Letters From Your Sisters on Stepping Into Your Power. Her newest book, Dear Black Girl, is a collection of more than 30 feminist, anti-racist, body positive, LGBTQ+ positive, anti-respectability politics and pro-Black letters from Black women to Black girls wrapped in Tamara’s analysis. She is currently working on her proposal for a third book! We can’t wait to read it. You can find Sisters and Dear Black Girl wherever books are sold.
Tamara has been working on building her writing career. It has made her stronger by learning to take rejection, grow creative ideas, getting smart about publishing, and building a community of fellow writers. We found two interesting things about Tamara when chatting: she once rode around New York City in a limo with Mikey from the old Life Cereal commercial and his brothers. She also became a certified yoga instructor last year! We will be taking some yoga lessons from Tamara!
Tamara’s advice to young writers? Keep writing. Make space and time to write.
“The amazing Black woman horror writer Tananarive Due once suggested to me, at a great dinner over Greek food, that it is okay to set a goal to write one word a day. Now, if you sit down to write, chances are you will write more than one word. That is a win!”
Thank you, Tamara, for showing us that adventures aren’t always going somewhere; they can also be where the pages take us. By using her writing skills, she has managed to speak on sensitive topics for our community, giving a voice to the voiceless. To stay up to date with Tamara and her adventures, you can follow her on Facebook (@TamaraWinfreyHarris), Twitter (@whattamisaid), Instagram (@tamarawinfreyharris) and her website here: https://www.tamarawinfreyharris.com/.