News, Features, & Commentary
A native of Houston, Texas, I'm a journalist, creative writer, and narrative strategist. I'm a contributing writer for the Ontario-based digital magazine magazine kaur.space, and I've previously written for the online magazine VocaLady and the blog of the Houston-based arts education nonprofit Writers in the Schools. My narrative strategy work includes managing publicity, grant proposals, marketing strategy, and web & social media copy for local and national advocacy campaigns and non-profit organizations.
Follow me on Medium @willathewisp or visit my author website for more of my original writing! To contact me, just click on the mail icon above.
News, Features, & Commentary
In the world of architecture and design, community is the touchstone for a movement that goes by many names: activist architecture, participatory design, socially-engaged practice. Each name has its own background, but they reflect a common idea: systemic social inequality is designed, planned, and built into all aspects of our lives. Perhaps, then, design and planning might be instrumental, even necessary, in tearing it down.
When I decided to become a writer, spurred on in my junior year of high school by my hard-nosed but absolutely encouraging AP English Language teacher as well as If You Want to Write , a little known book of writerly wisdom by Brenda Ueland that I rescued from the throw-away pile of my high school's theatre library, I felt like I had opened a portal to a world of expression so vast I couldn't have imagined it until I had tasted it.
FOR Darlene Randall, faith was never a conscious choice, something to be wrangled with. It's always been a part of her. Mrs. Randall - or Sister Randall, as I refer to her - isn't related to me, but she is so much like a wise, kindly aunt that I sometimes forget.
At 7 p.m. on Sunday, half an hour before the Meta-Four Houston vs. Houston VIP Send-Off Slam was set to begin, the performance space at Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston (MATCH) was already nearly full of families, friends, and fans awaiting an evening of pulse-pounding, breathtaking poetry.
Empowering youth voices is at the core of our mission at WITS. That's why we partnered with XQ America and Brave New Voices to bring the Rethink High School campaign to Houston, creating an open forum event where youth from across the city can voice their ideas of what high school can and should be, brainstorming with each other and sharing their viewpoints with local public officials and youth advocates-people with the power to make a difference.
Since the sun rose this morning, I've been trying to figure out what to say about the attack in Orlando. I've always shied away from talking directly about senseless tragedy and death, even when it visits my own home, because I believe that some events are too grave for words - my words, at least....
If I had to use one word to characterize the period in my life between 2015 and 2016, it would be unexpected. I didn't expect to develop health problems that forced me to opt out of what should have been my sophomore year of college. I didn't expect to find one of the best friends...
Here at VocaLady, we're all about women in media. It's our raison d'être, our modus operandi, our...you get the picture. And for good reason. As we've highlighted before, the amount of women in communications, from political commentary to sports journalism to film production, is consistently many paces behind our male counterparts.
It's been a few weeks since the controversy over Kim Kardashian-West's latest Internet-breaking splash: nude selfies posted on Twitter. However, if the references to her act as a symbol of all that is wrong with modern, liberated womanhood that I still see in online discussions are any indication, the debate that it sparked over the...
Recently, a female friend of mine told me something that I found difficult to wrap my mind around: her boyfriend of several months had been using a timer whenever they hung out together, so that he would know when to send her on her way and get back to his "busy" life.
I love the website Everyday Feminism. I discovered it almost a year ago, directed there by links my friends would post to Facebook, and after about the third visit, I realized what a low-key gold mine I'd stumbled upon. There were scores of articles about every possible social justice topic I could imagine, and many...
Narrative Development & Strategy
In order to truly evaluate the functionality, usability, and user experience of the WITS website - the three key elements of website design - the WITS web redesign team would need to collect data using different types of standard UX (user experience) testing models, such as user surveys, content inventory, A/B testing, and error testing, just to name a few.
A diverse group of artists and speakers from the Houston Metroplex work together to share diverse perspectives and raise awareness of intersectional justice in our communities.
On Nov 9th, 1000 millennials took the streets for justice on race, climate, immigration. Together, we've built a powerful new alliance across movements - the kind we need to change what's politically possible in this country.