Kalela Williams of Staunton will celebrate the launch of her first book, Tangleroot, at Staunton Augusta Art Center in downtown tonight at 6:30 p.m.
Tangleroot, a young adult fiction story of “Noni,” was 20 years in the making.
“It’s been a big whirlwind.”
Williams began writing what would become Tangleroot in 2004 or 2005 as the story of a contemporary woman who finds an 1880s grave. Her main characters were white because she did not expect a book like Tangleroot could get published if the main characters were Black.
“It’s changed a lot. In the beginning, the same essential story of a contemporary woman discovering the gravesite of a woman who lived in the past has always been the case, but the circumstances have been different, the story around that discovery has been very different,” Williams said.
But then she went to graduate school and put the manuscript aside until she began to think of it as a story of reclamation of home, and she changed the characters from white to Black. In 2011, she was ready to publish but could not find an agent. She was told that her book would not do well in the literary market.
“One agent said: ‘Really good story, it’s not quite ready, here’s some suggestions to change it.'” Approximately, a year later, Williams had taken the suggestions and resubmitted the book but now the same agent said she did not feel as connected to the story.
Meanwhile, Williams’ heart was not in the story either because she was grieving the loss of her mother, who died in January 2012.
“It’s also a mother-daughter story in a lot of ways,” Williams said of the book. “And that was really hard to focus on when my mom passed away.”
In 2012, she put the book down, for what she thought would be for good.
“I had really, really tried to get it to go somewhere,” Williams said.
In 2020, her boyfriend, Davey White, had heard her talk a lot about the manuscript. She applied for a residency with Ten House. When Williams was awarded the residency, she thought it was a mistake. She spent two and a half weeks in a Portland, Oregon apartment conducting heavy revisions on her manuscript.
“That was really pivotal. The work that I did before the Ten House residency and then the work that I did during the Ten House residency was absolutely pivotal to this work,” Williams said of the residency. Some of the suggestions from the agent she kept, but she also stayed in tune with her vision for the story.
And in December 2020, she found an agent whom she really wanted to work with, and the agent found her a publisher and an editor. Rewrites were done last summer.
“But, the whole process this go around, between finding an agent and finding a publisher, it’s been very fast,” Williams said.
Williams’ day job is director of the Virginia Center for the Book for the Virginia Humanities. She helps the public learn about authors and brings authors to the Virginia Festival of the Book.
“The weirdest experience was my first time doing a book event for myself where I’m signing advance reader copies and I’m sort of like: ‘Wait, I’m behind the table signing books. I’m not in front of the table handing out pens or putting Post-it notes in people’s books so they can write their names down.”
A 2000 University of Mary Washington graduate with a degree in English, Williams grew up in Atlanta. She previously lived in Staunton from 2009 to 2012, then Philadelphia, until she and White returned to Staunton in 2022.
“There was a long time when I did not think this book was going to make it,” Williams said.
What kept her going was the belief in the story of her book, which is set in a fictional town in central Virginia called Magnolia, which is modeled after Lovingston, Farmville, Lynchburg, Madison and Orange County. Another fictional town called Daventry is mentioned and is based on Staunton.
“I used a lot of local history,” she said. Staunton’s Black community Uniontown also makes an appearance in the book as a fictional town. “It’s very Virginia. Although the locations are fictional, it’s very Virginia.” Charlottesville is also mentioned in the book.
“Tangleroot” is the name of the Virginia plantation the story is set on. Her agent said the name of the plantation should contain some tension and hint at the mystery of the story.
“She’s finding a tangled history and she’s finding her roots and the roots of that tangled history.”
Williams will hold a book launch at Staunton Augusta Art Center today at 6:30 p.m. White will perform shadow puppetry. Stone Soup Books will also have merchandise for sale.
She said “Noni” is complete fiction.
“This is definitely not my story,” Williams said.
Staunton Augusta Art Center is at 20 S. New Street, Staunton.
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Rebecca Barnabi
