About

Dr. Niama L. J. Williams believes that dreams deserved to be lived, and thus has committed herself and her company to liberating those who dream of a different life each day but cannot seem to actively step into that life.

After 17+ years as a part-time professor of literature and composition, Dr. Ni experienced homelessness and that revolutionized her self-concept and commitment to others. Now Dr. Ni knows for sure that those who serve the indigent and the indigent themselves are some of the hardest working and most stressed people in our society.

Her company, Blowing Up Barriers Enterprises, seeks to alleviate that stress by educating companies, non-profits, and social services agencies—employees and clients—about the acquisition of spiritual grit such that one is unafraid to reach for a life that one has imagined but feared to claim.

Dr. Niama L. Williams is the author of ten books, co-author of three. Each title describes her survival of trauma and celebrates those who have assisted her as she’s walked her path.

Dr. Ni also facilitates two workshop series, “Affirming the Fully Imagined Life” and “It’s Okay To Want: Eroticism and the Survival of Sexual Trauma.” Review her credentials, publications and workshop descriptions at her website; or listen to her audiobooks at iAmplify.com.

Themes

– Affirming the Fully Imagined Life: Blow Up Your Barriers and Live Free!
– Blowing Up Barriers Take One: Hey, Why Can’t I?
– The Inner Self & The Outer Self: Two Workshops To Put You on the Path to a Fully Imagined Life
– The Nine Steps to Living Well BEFORE You Lose the Weight
– The Four Boyfriends: How To Design Your Life Spiritually

Assets

Nineteen years of public speaking that began with little lunchtime gatherings in the university library at which I worked as a library assistant. The University Librarian attended and my department chair approved the room; my old high school speech and debate coach took a day off from School Board presidenting to hear my nascent prose and poetry.

I learned to welcome the silence following my words; my insecurity washed away by those who walked up afterwards, telling me that they had not clapped because they were still mulling over the startling things I had said.

People who grew up hating poetry love my lines; people who thought they were not supposed to engage with ideas find themselves discussing my metaphors and symbolism. I am the academic poet who reaches Willie Bobo on the street.

I bring to the speakers platform the understanding Sheniqua has of the world, and all that is arrayed against her. Yes, I have Ph.D. in hand, but I have used whatever resources at my disposal to GET that Ph.D.; thus I can touch the women who waste their afternoons in DPA offices across the country and around the world. I know how they are treated and I know how they chafe at that treatment.

I am also a poet and academic in love with the word. Humble and easily smitten, I wrap my arms around T. S. Eliot and Toni Cade Bambara with equivalent glee; I joke about Eliot’s relentlessly paralyzed super-intellectual as easily as I recognize the boy men begging for money from their women in the grocery store that Bambara describes in THE SALT EATERS.

My mission one to share that joy in the word, to reveal the freedom within expressing your own brilliance, the liberation available via pen, paper, and a quiet afternoon.

Rave Reviews

My speaking engagements go back to 1989, and thus I will not list them here. Ms. Maleka Fruean ([email protected]), formerly of Big Blue Marble Bookstore and Mr. Dan Gasiewski ([email protected]) of First Person Arts can attest to the versatility, wit and agile mind at work when I stand in front of an audience.

Mr. Gregory Frost ([email protected]), prize-winning science fiction author, can discuss my instructive abilities and the many ways in which I can entice comments from the most resistant and terrified undergraduate audiences. Mr. Aaron Lazar can attest to the fairness and agility of my many Amazon book reviews.