Delaware State of the Arts Podcast
Delaware State of the Arts is a weekly podcast that presents interviews with arts organizations and leaders who contribute to the cultural vibrancy of communities throughout Delaware. Delaware State of the Arts is provided as a service of the Division of the Arts, in partnership with NEWSRADIO 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV.
Delaware State of the Arts Podcast
S12 E47: Delaware State of the Arts - Tanerra Willis and The Amazing Corner
Ready to be inspired by the literary world? Join us for an engaging conversation with Tanerra Willis, the powerhouse author and visionary behind The Amazing Corner. Tanerra shares her journey to becoming a beacon of empowerment for self-published authors, especially women and teens. Discover how her online bookstore and community hub are breaking down traditional publishing barriers, all while promoting diverse literature and encouraging a love for reading among families.
Self-published authors often face a labyrinth of challenges, and we're peeling back the layers to reveal how Tanerra is paving the way for them to shine. Listen in as we discuss how The Amazing Corner offers a sanctuary for authors to showcase their work, despite the ever-evolving social media landscape and financial constraints. By curating inclusive and diverse books, Tanerra is fostering a community where children can see themselves in the stories they read and families can engage in meaningful literacy-driven events.
Empowerment through literature goes beyond just books; it's about building communities and mentorship. Tanerra's dedication to providing what she once needed herself is transforming lives, particularly for women who seek guidance and resources. From the Dream Builder Series to extraordinary stories like "Extraordinary Jordan," Tanerra is challenging stereotypes and inspiring children to pursue their dreams, regardless of their background. Don't miss this episode filled with passion, empowerment, and the relentless pursuit of creating a more inclusive literary world.
The Delaware Division of the Arts, a branch of the Delaware Department of State, is committed to supporting the arts and cultivating creativity to enhance the quality of life in Delaware. Together with its advisory body, the Delaware State Arts Council, the Division administers grants and programs that support arts programming, educate the public, increase awareness of the arts, and integrate the arts into all facets of Delaware life. Learn more at Arts.Delaware.Gov.
Delaware State of the Arts is a weekly podcast that presents interviews with arts organizations and leaders who contribute to the cultural vibrancy of communities throughout Delaware. Delaware State of the Arts is provided as a service of the Division of the Arts, in partnership with NEWSRADIO 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV.
For Delaware State of the Arts. I'm Andy Truscott. My guest today is Tanira Willis. Tanira is a five-time published author, contributing writer for Women of More magazine and owner of the Amazing Corner. In addition to being a retail entrepreneur, she is a motivational speaker, coach and mentor, with a special interest in helping women and teen girls. Tanira not only inspires them through her workshops and coachings, but aims to provide them with practical resources, tools and access that enables them to improve their personal and professional life. Today, we'll speak to her about her work with the youth using the literary and visual arts and how you can get involved with the Amazing Corner. Tanira. Thank you so much for joining me today and, as we kick off, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to create the Amazing Corner.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate the opportunity and, as you mentioned, I am a woman who loves to support other women, especially with women who have similar backgrounds as myself. I love to empower teens and show them that can do spirit and how to do spirit. I'm also an author who loves to support other authors. So, in that vein, several years ago I created TheAmazingCornercom, which is a kind doing to help support other authors to sell their books, to showcase their books and to help support schools, libraries and community centers to grow the love of literacy and foster a love of reading. And I'm able to do that through the Amazing Author catalog and book fairs, which is what I'm most excited about this year.
Speaker 1:For listeners that may have never heard about the Amazing Corner before, tell us a little bit about what it does and what it seeks to do in our larger community.
Speaker 2:In large part, it's an online bookstore. It features mostly diverse children's books, but we do have a variety of books for everyone in the family and everyone in the community. It's also a place where you can go, where you're looking for services to empower women and teen girls. So we offer workshops, which are mostly empowerment workshops. It's trying to teach people to overcome systemic barriers, overcome everyday life challenges and really just accomplish their goals.
Speaker 2:I really have the message of be amazing, which means to be the best version of yourself, despite your past, despite any present challenges and despite any barriers that may be in front of you. I believe that one of my strengths is resilience and conflict resolution and just execution, so I like to empower other women through the things that I've been able to overcome and achieve. I think when a lot of people look at me now, they think that I've always been here, but I've been through so many layers. I always say I am the true rose that grew from concrete. I am a great example of started from the bottom. Now I'm here, so I like to share my transparency and my background and my past, to kind of show people this is where I started, but this is not where I am to hopefully empower them to achieve their own personal and professional goals.
Speaker 1:As I'm on your website. Here there is obviously just a plethora of resources, but the biggest and probably the most prominent right is your book fairs, your books for sale. Talk to us a little bit about the opportunity you saw kind of in the community and why you felt that the Amazing Corner was kind of the right organization to fill that opportunity.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thanks for asking that. So this is my baby. I'm so engulfed in this right now. I feel so responsible for this to be successful.
Speaker 2:So the Amazing Author Catalogs features all self-published authors and I'm a self-published author myself, so that goes back to being an author who support other authors. My son and I published our first children's book back in 2020, at the height of the pandemic and, as all self-publishers know, or self-published authors know, it's such a bear to market and promote your book, to get book sales, to get space in bookstores and catalogs. So I went through all of those challenges for years trying to get in some of the larger book fairs and you need to have a PR agent or you need to be a New York Times bestseller agent, or you need to be a New York Times bestseller. So I saw that as a big problem, but not as the end to me. So I have learned several different ways to be able to successfully kick down those doors and those barriers, and so the Amazing Author Catalog serves as a conduit for other authors to give them opportunities to showcase their books.
Speaker 2:So I've been declined by Scholastic. I've been declined from the African-American Book Fair in Philadelphia some of the larger places where you would love to showcase your books. So now I feel like I am the catalog and I am the book fair and I'm bringing other authors along with me. So it's just a way to say, hey, we don't have to rely on them solely. Yes, those are amazing opportunities, but we can create our own opportunities and use our own group economics as self-published authors to help elevate our great works, because our works are just as good as some of the larger authors and some of the New York Times bestsellers and our messages and our stories deserve to be told. Messages and our stories deserve to be told and they do connect with families and provide that positive self-representation, self-imagery, respect for others, diversity, inclusion. So it's just a way to get our books into the families across the state and across the country.
Speaker 1:As I'm looking here, a question that the general public might have right is that are there physical book fairs or is this an online only book fair?
Speaker 2:So all of the above, we have our online bookstore. We have a catalog that you can shop from, both physical and on our own website, and, yes, I love hosting in-person book fairs. I'm looking to partner with any schools, organization, youth-based and family-based centers. So what do we do? We host mobile book fairs, so we would agree on a date and a time we show up. We're able to set up in less than an hour. We can set up from anywhere from one table to eight tables. We're up to about 50 books that we were able to showcase. We have samples for people to look, feel and flip through and ask questions.
Speaker 1:And we can usually sell these books on site. The self-published books that you guys are helping to promote to help to sell Wilmington or Delaware-based artists or authors, or any of the above can be regional, can be national.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so we do have a lot of Delaware, pennsylvania and Maryland-based authors, but we also have authors that are from Texas, from Florida, from North Carolina, so they're across the United States, but we do have most authors from the state of Delaware and I would say we have a large quantity in the Baltimore Maryland area. But, yeah, we're showcasing a lot of Delaware authors and we're excited about that.
Speaker 1:Outside of the barrier or obstacle of, as a self-published author, having to find your way into kind of like the big two or three companies. What do you think are some of the obstacles that self-published authors often have to face, and what's an example of kind of how you overcame that obstacle as you became your own self-published author?
Speaker 2:Definitely. Time, bandwidth and money are some of the challenges that self-publishers, authors, face. Most of us have day jobs, we have families, we have church obligations, we're a part of organizations so this is marketing and promoting your book can be a full-time job, especially if you want to be successful at it. So that is definitely one of the challenges that we have. Social media is our friend, but it's also our enemy, because of all of the algorithms and all of the competition and how often they change these algorithms.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't have time to dance on reels and TikToks and be animated and edit, even though there's a lot of tools that help us with that. So that is a way that I utilize the Amazing Author Catalog to kind of help support them. So I give them space and time and highlights on my website, on my social media. We do reels together as a group, we do events together as a group, so we're just trying to solve that problem that, okay, you don't have the time, but you have an amazing work that people need to see and people need as a resource. So the Amazing Corner helps to help fill in some of those gaps and create space for that Perhaps a silly question Only kids books.
Speaker 1:Are you working to also kind of help uplift inspirational books? You know so is the Amazing Corner only focused on books for youth or books for adults as well?
Speaker 2:So it didn't initially start off to be a children's book catalog and it is not. It is predominantly filled with children books, but we do have a selection of teen and adult books, but I do make sure that they are, like you said, empowering. They're inspiring, they're motivational, they're self-help. So we do memoirs and autobiographies as well, so we wouldn't have different genres like romance and mystery and thriller and things like that. They are anything that's empowering. All of our books seek to uplift, connect, empower, educate and provide an escape for our readers. So, yes, we do have a selection of teen and adult books, but it's a lot smaller than our children's book selection.
Speaker 1:So, as you're looking for topics of books or as yourself, as kind of like the CEO of the Amazing Corner, looking to see what books to help promote, are there kind of certain topics that you typically gravitate towards or is it a wide open opportunity?
Speaker 2:So no, I don't gravitate to a specific topic. I'm actually looking to make sure we have books on every topic and that connects with more families. I would say that our buyers definitely gravitate towards books that, whatever, they're seeking a need for validation, for encouragement. So if we have a book, girls can be firefighters too. So for our little adventurous girls, the girls that do not want to fit into the status quo, they gravitate to that one one.
Speaker 2:We have a book called I'm Best as Me, or how Tall Will I Be, featuring young black boys on a cover. So, of course, young black boys who may have self-confidence issues or have unique abilities or are shorter in their families, those are the books they look forward to. But some of our bestsellers we have let's Get Financially Fit. So both older teens and tweens love that book. But parents love that book to have as a tool people in organizations, books that provide positive self-imagery. And the books that do probably most well is our, I would say our adventure books. Probably most well is our, I would say our adventure books. So the ones that are about space and science and superheroes. Those are some of the books that do well. Our teachers love our books about empathy and kindness and respect for others. So I think it's mostly what the reader is looking for, what captures the eye and the heart of the reader.
Speaker 1:I want to take just a minute here to remind our listeners. You're listening to Delaware State of the Arts on News Radio 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV as I'm looking at your website. There's also a great opportunity here just to learn more about where you're going to be in the community and where individuals who may be interested but just not know where to find you can go. So, coming up here, you've got the Wilmington PAL Art Fair. You've got Visions Academy K-2 Book Fair. Talk to us about why you think it's so important to not only kind of operate this within the community but proactively get out and get into the community with some of these opportunities.
Speaker 2:I think in this current world, where kids are spending so much time on devices and on social media and YouTube and not connecting, being able to engage with youth and families has been a very good conduit to help people read. I have a lot of parents who may say my kids don't read, but once they see these books with things that interest them or pique their imagination, they do want the books. I was recently at Wilmington Library and the kids were actually crying because they couldn't get books and they're excited when they see ballerinas on the cover or the night owl for the kid who fights sleep every night. So what I'm finding is kids do really want to read. They're just not provided the opportunity. So doing these in-person events allows me to engage and make reading fun and even me as a bookseller, fun. I make sure I dress for the environment that I'm in and the age group that I'm in to help pull people in and make it me approachable and comfortable and relatable, so that allows me to engage them and I get to ask some different things about themselves and the things that they like and then I can connect them with a book. So we can't do that online, right? We can't do that through social media.
Speaker 2:And what's happened you mentioned. I'll be at Visions Academy. They've invited me back for a third time because their kids love it. They're demanding that their parents send them in with money to buy from the bookstore. They're demanding that their parents pick them up to come see the book fair. So we make it fun. We take pictures, we make videos, we shout out things. Like I said, they can touch and feel and flip through the book. So it's not like you're in a library and you have to tiptoe around and be gentle. Nope, this is a look, touch, see, feel and act type of book fair and, like I said, I like to make it fun. If anyone knows me or is around me, all of my event. We're joking, we're teasing, you know. We're challenging each other just to keep everybody on their toes and make it a great engaging experience.
Speaker 1:As I'm looking at a lot of the book covers on your website, it would be silly not to note that a lot of the cover art shows youth of all different colors, of all different abilities. How important do you think that is to students actually engaging with the book and or kind of feeling that they are represented largely in kind of the books that you're not only reading to them but selling to the greater community?
Speaker 2:I think it's very important. And then I like to mention that I'm an African-American woman. But when I started this catalog, that was not my goal to make this a catalog for African-American women or for African-American people. But that is who gravitates to me. They are my customer, african-american people. But that is who gravitates to me, they are my customer and, again, that's not by design, that's just who connects with me and so I had to kind of push and say hey, even though I want to showcase, and unapologetically showcase Black and brown faces, I want everyone to be able to see themselves in my book. So when I do so, everyone can't get in my catalog. They have to complete an application, I have to be able to read their book.
Speaker 2:I'm searching their websites and their social media just to make sure it's a person that I would feel safe engaging with, that it's a book that I would give to my child and I have turned down books. So I looked for okay, yes, we want Black and Brown representation, but what about the white kid? What about the Asian kid? What about the Islamic kid? What about the kid with a missing limb? What about the kid with the speech impediment? How will they see themselves? How will they feel important in our books.
Speaker 2:So every time I see a book that checks several of those boxes, I'm like, okay, this gets it.
Speaker 2:And I don't know if you got to see, there's a book in our catalog called Extraordinary Jordan and it's about a doctor.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's not about a doctor, it's written by a doctor who has something called Usher syndrome, which I wasn't familiar with, but it's about having hearing deficit, vision deficits as well as balance deficits. So that's an amazing way to introduce kids to different things. And okay, now we have someone who has a visual deficit that can be seen in the pages, who walks with a cane, who can be seen with, who has a cochlear implant and it talks about so many things in this book as well as it's a black kid on the cover, but she's an engaging with a white kid. So, and they've come to find out that they like the same things, they love the same things and they've had some of the same challenges in life. So that's one of my favorite books. So I'm intentional about it and I want everyone to feel good. But I often say, even if you do not see yourself in this book, there's something that you can learn from every book, so don't shy away from a book whose cover doesn't connect with you instantly.
Speaker 1:I love that and thank you for noting that. If I, as the general public, want to learn more about how to either engage with you or the Amazing Corner, or just books in general, what do you think is a great first step for a parent maybe looking to expose their children to new or even independent books like this?
Speaker 2:I have a few outlets, I would say all of my social media websites. You can find the Amazing Corner. If you find the Amazing Corner, you'll find me. I would say, if you're looking for book reviews, I do most of my book reviews on TikTok. If you're looking for catalog highlights and author highlights, we do that through our Instagram. Or if you're looking for catalog highlights and author highlights, we do that through our Instagram. Or if you're just looking to shop for books for your family or your organization the great birthday gifts, baby shower gifts and things of that sort then theamazingcornercom would be the best resource for that.
Speaker 1:You recently received an artist opportunity grant from the Division of the Arts. Tell us a little bit about the project that that's supporting and, again, kind of the opportunity or need that you are kind of filling in the state of Delaware through that grant project.
Speaker 2:So that is one of my most exciting moments of the summer. So thank you, delaware, division of Arts. I'm super excited about it and it's a grant that a lot of people don't know about. And the funny thing is someone from another state said, hey, check to see if your state has an arts grant and, lo and behold, I Googled, found it. It was very easy to find. The application process was very simple, but it is empowering.
Speaker 2:My next series called the Dream Builder Series. So the Dream Builder Series is what you talked about earlier making sure that every kid can see themselves in the pages, be inspired and things of that sort. So it will include a coloring book, which is already published. It's called the Amazing Me Coloring Activity Book. It will include a picture book, which is what the Arts Grant is helping to empower. It's helping to cover the illustrations, what we're already starting. So the Amazing Me picture book. And then it will have a game. So it's a family-friendly game.
Speaker 2:So all three of them are to inspire dreams and to make sure that each kid knows that they can fulfill their dream. So, despite if I'm Asian, if I'm Hispanic, if I wear dreads, if I'm a girl, or if I'm a boy, if I'm black, if I'm brown, if I have achondroplasia, things like that. You should be able to see, we have 26 different characters in these books with all different abilities. So we have people wearing eyeglasses, people with missing limbs, we have people with vitiligo wearing eyeglasses, people with missing limbs, we have people with vitiligo. So I really tried to be intentional hearing aids, things like that to be able to show different kids fulfilling their dreams and working in different careers. So what I was hoping to accomplish is the young Black kid to be able to see themselves as the engineer or the chef or the ballerina. I was able to see the kid that's in a wheelchair to see themselves as a doctor or a veterinarian.
Speaker 2:So just not to be pigeonholed in a certain, I would say, stereotypical career based on who you are or what background you come from, but to know that, no matter who I am, I can be what I want to be. So that's what the Dream Builder series is. And then I want other kids can be what I want to be. So that's what the Dream Builder series is. And then I want other kids to be able to accept people in those roles and not say what are you doing here? As a Black woman. I am a certified pediatric registered nurse by trade and when I started to go up the ladder and go into management and leadership, a lot of times I had a shocking result. When they asked for the manager or the boss and I came out I'm like yes me, why not, why wouldn't it be me? So I want to decrease those experiences. So if I have the ability and I seek to do it, I can do it and I want other kids to know that and see that for themselves and for their friends.
Speaker 1:I do want to also note that the work you do is not just about book fairs and children's books, but also your own professional development, your own kind of mentorship of women in our community. Talk to us about what brings you the biggest joy when it relates to kind of helping others in our community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard a phrase a few years ago that we give people what we need. So I feel in large part that that's what I'm doing. I grew up in the inner city of Chester, Pennsylvania, and also spent some time a lot of how-to. I've always gratefully had a I can do, but not always how-to or access and resources. So the Amazing Corner seeks to fill those gaps and make connections.
Speaker 1:Kanira. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you want to learn more about the Amazing Corner, visit their website at wwwtheamazingcornercom.
