Grandma’s Biscuits

Black Publishing and Black Authors: More Than Process, It’s Personal

The privilege of providing publishing and printing to fellow Black authors has not only created an opportunity to help others. The personal growth itself is sacred.

This was born from frustration. Seeing some of the most creative, documented work placed on Amazon, reduced to sections like “Rosa Parks,” simply because there were no other options. Even Black publishers, at times, have to send their work off to corporate printers when it is time to produce.

Before committing to my first book Generational Curses: Trauma Letters From Our Time to Yours, I made a pledge to the ancestors to keep the work entirely in Black hands, from visualization to existence itself. That was the beginning of Bloodline Publishing.

Since then, we’ve had the honor of publishing a soulful Black poet from New Jersey, currently preparing a Queen’s debut work, her own spiritual expression through words.

And now, another connection has been made.

We’ll call her Ms. Deborah. Not for anonymity, but for soul.

With The Bloodline Tribune, our cultural magazine for the Black Diaspora, I have grown a veneration for other Black writers’ work. A true fan of many of our writers. I value the story beyond the pages, the intent, the tone. Black people, Black words, have always been art.

So when Ms. Deborah reached out to share her autobiography, a work she had been building for years, documenting her life in pieces, I was intrigued by the story and the mission behind it.

Behind every Black author is more than what sits on the page. Why they wrote it. What they are trying to express. What they want us to learn, or remember. Our messages have always begun as storytelling, whether to each other or to ourselves.

During the consultation she spoke about her grandmother’s house. The heat of the stove. The smell of fresh dough filling the room. The rhythm of lifting and setting down that heavy black skillet. A trademark in Black southern culture.

In that moment, I wasn’t a publisher.

I was a relative.

Because my great-grandmother graced me with the same thing. The same warmth. The same quiet language of love.

That’s when I understood something clearly.

My experience with Black authors is not just a process. It’s ancestral.

The vision is already there.

Our role is to position it with intention, to shape how it is presented so the author’s voice and image come through clearly. We take the time to make sure the work is seen the way it was meant to be seen, and felt the way it was meant to be felt.

Black literature stands beyond any category or subgroup. Beyond a Pulitzer Prize. It is communication. It is the Bloodline’s core. At times, it is the translator of our culture, tying together the commonality we all carry within our soul.

So if you have unfinished pages, keep writing. If the next classic is sitting in a journal somewhere, go and recover it now. Maybe someone needs to hear the words you have hidden on paper.

We are here to bring back the art of Black press, like the stamped pages of newspapers like the Negro World.

What passes through these stages of publishing is held, preserved, and carried forward.

Your work deserves more than a file upload.

We grow together. One and the same.

Black publishing is back like it never left.

Because it never did.

Bring your work to www.thebloodline743.com⁠