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In conversation with author Pam Williams

Join us to celebrate Black History Month 2024

Pam Williams is a Grenadian heritage writer from North London. She attended Shelburne Girls secondary school in Holloway and later studied fashion at prestigious St. Martin’s School of Art, graduating in 1984. For the next two decades Pam worked as a fashion journalist, magazine Fashion Editor (for She, PS, Shape, Now) and freelance stylist.

After leaving the fashion world to be a foster carer for three years, Pam became a teaching assistant then retrained as a teacher in 2017. She now works at a special school in Westminster and leads its Post 16+ provision.

Maya Angelou inspired Pam’s teenage dream of becoming an author; and it was her heroine’s death in 2014 that renewed her determination to ‘dare to try’ and make that fantasy a reality. Pam joined the group Afrikan Heritage Writers (AHW) and attended writing workshops to hone and share her craft.

Pam’s short story, ’Soul Talking’ (Islington Libraries highly commended entry) was published in the City of Stories anthology (2017, Spread the Word). She contributed to AHW’s poetry and prose collection, 100 Years Unheard - WWI and the Afrikan Diasporan Woman (2018) and won the Black Ink Magazine New Writing 2022 Prize with short story, Hibiscus;

It was winning a place on the London Writers Award (2019) that gave Pam the push and industry mentoring she needed, to transform a manuscript she’d started thirty years before into the first draft of her debut novel A Trace of Sun.

Published on 1st March 2024 by Legend Press, Pam’s book was longlisted for the Women Prize 2024.