In this edition of “Black Book People,” we are spotlighting Stephanie Williams. Williams is a force in the comics world. She’s written for both of the Big 2 comic publishers, Marvel and DC, notable for her work rejuvenating the DC character, Nubia—Wonder Woman’s Black twin sister. She launched her comics work in fan comics, fusing the sitcom energy of Living Single with a slate of oft underappreciated Black women superheroines with Living Heroes.
Williams has also written a number of creator owned comics, including Temporal from Mad Cave Studios Comics, which was nominated for the 2026 Best New Series Eisner Award. Her wide ranging and masterful storytelling earned Williams a ground breaking Eisner Award Nomination for Best Writer, making her the first Black woman to ever be nominated for this category and the first Black writer to be nominated since Milestone Comics co-founder Dwayne McDuffie’s nomination over thirty years ago.
While the awards for Best New Series and Best Writers ultimately went to other projects and writers at this year’s San Diego Comic Con, the fact remains: Stephanie Williams is shaking up the comics world and she’s determined to bring as many diverse collaborators with her as she can.
midnight & indigo editor Ravynn K. Stringfield sat down with Williams for a new edition of “Black Book People,” our interview series where we speak with some of the movers and shakers in and around publishing. The following conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.
Ravynn K. Stringfield [RKS]: First things first, we are here to celebrate your Eisner nominations—plural! We’re excited for you, congratulations!
Your nomination for best writer makes you the first Black woman to be nominated in the category, the second Black person ever only after Dwayne McDuffie. Can you tell us about McDuffie’s nomination? Why has his work in particular transformed comics and what does his legacy mean to you?
Stephanie Williams [SW]: The Eisner Awards in itself is basically the Oscars for the comic book industry. It’s a very big deal. With nominations, and certainly wins, your profile raises. Hopefully, you get more work and it gets your name out there in a very similar way to actors/actresses/directors/composers when they’re nominated for Oscars. It’s the same thing.
Dwayne McDuffie, who left us far too soon, was nominated in 1995 for his work on Icon. Icon is a superhero and also a comic book series that came out of Milestone, a [company] that was put together by McDuffie, Denys Cowan, [among others]. These Black creators got together to create a world of Black superheroes.
They happened to partner with DC for distribution. Milestone ran from 1993 to about 1997, so it was quick, but it made such a huge impact. So much so, that Static came out of that—the Static Shock animated series. Dwayne was writing comics long before his nomination and long after his nomination. But the significance in him getting that nomination was, again, before me, he was the only Black writer to get a best writer nomination.
There have been other Black writers and artists who have been nominated for best series, best ongoing, best new series, best academic work and so on, but the best writer nomination is supposed to be a celebration or highlight of those who are very prolific and their work stands out.
The fact that I was nominated is a little surreal because Dwayne McDuffie is one of the biggest reasons I even got interested in reading comics, let alone wanting to write them. He did such a phenomenal job of humanizing these characters who are often seen as bigger than life. As a Black person, as a Black woman, as a queer Black woman, that is something that I held onto because, a lot of times, reading comics growing up, I wasn’t always able to read stories about people who looked like me. I had to find a commonality with these characters even if they didn’t look like me, but I was able to do that because of writers like Dwayne McDuffie, who reminded you of the human experience. Even though these are extraordinary people, they come from ordinary lives, and that’s okay: that’s where you could see yourselves in them.
RKS: How has the state of the industry shifted since the 90s and where are we today? One of the things I’ve seen you speak at length about is how diverse this year’s nomination class is. What are you excited to see there? What do you want more of in the industry?
SW: I want more of this energy of celebrating diverse voices. I don’t just mean Black voices, although that’s obviously my go to. I mean, diversity in nominations across the board; it’s not riddled with cishet white men. We have women who have been nominated, people who identify as queer, nonbinary have been nominated. My co-writer from Nubia and the Amazons, Vita Ayala was nominated, and they are one of the biggest reasons I’m even in the comic book industry because they climbed and reached back. We have Noir is the New Black which is a collection of stories nominated for best anthology, DC Pride has been nominated, we have Trungles, his graphic novel was nominated. He is of Asian descent.
It’s so beautiful looking at the nomination list and you don’t have to look too far to find someone who looks like you or has had similar life experiences as you, and I think that’s important because the comic book medium in itself is so subversive. It gives people a chance to read stories that infuse concepts, political themes, different ways of life into these stories that a lot of times, people are just coming into it for escapism. Because it’s a drawn medium, in the same way, people approach animation, their guard is down. So when people are reading these stories, it allows them to think about things a little bit differently.
And is that necessary, right? We would think people would be able to do that regardless of story but that’s just not how the world works and I don’t think that’s ever how it worked. You learn empathy and how to have empathy and how to sympathize with people who are not in the communities that you are by hearing and listening to their stories. This medium is that. It is no different than novels or watching movies or TV shows. It’s another form of storytelling, but it is a form of storytelling we should be taking more advantage of. This year’s Eisner nominations show that stories don’t belong to the few; they belong to the many. This year’s class of Eisner noms is a reflection of the actual world we live in.
RKS:. Can you talk a little bit about what the landscape of comics has been for Black women creators, Black queer women creators, Black femme creators. Who has inspired you, past and present? And how do their paths illuminate yours?
SW: Unfortunately, there haven’t been a ton of Black women in the comics space. I think automatically of cartoonists and Jackie Ormes, of course. I think of Barbara [Brandon-]Croft. These are women who immediately come to mind, but when it comes specifically to comics writers and artists, I didn’t start to see or even know that there were Black women artists and writers until my twenties and then going back and looking. I’m thinking about Alitha Martinez who has been in the industry for a long time and has done a lot of work for DC and Marvel.
The reason I’m highlighting the Big 2, as they’re called, is because that’s what people who don’t even read comics recognize. There’s an importance behind that. I think of Felicia D. Henderson, you might remember her from co-producing Sister, Sister, but she wrote Teen Titans for over a year. She is the first and only Black woman to write an ongoing series at DC comics and that was in the early 2000s. That’s a long, long, long time.
For me and my inspiration, and what Black women to look for, if I can be honest with you, it came from Black romance novels. That is where I didn’t have to look too hard to find stories about Black women across experiences, being worthy of love. I don’t want to bring up struggle love but I was able to read stories where I didn’t have to see that. And I knew that no how matter how flawed you are, wherever you are in your career, you are deserving of a love that doesn’t make you compromised, and does not ask that of you and you can be loved wholly as yourself.
I tell people this all the time that this is the frame of reference I bring to the comics that I write no matter the genre. I’m always going to write Black women because that is just what I’m going to do, but I want to bring that same humanization that I’ve seen through McDuffie and his earlier writing and marry that to the type of representation I got from Black romance novelists. It’s kind of an amalgamation. I was left no choice but to do that, to operate in that way, because there wasn’t an abundance of Black women in the space writing these characters, like a Storm, a Misty Knight, a Nubia, Vixen, and so on.
I was bringing in what I learned from Black romance novelists like Brenda Jackson, Beverly Jenkins, Donna Hill, Maureen Smith, Adrienne Byrd. And more recently, Kennedy Ryan, Danielle Allen, all of these women who, again, I really treat as the blueprint for my work and the way I approach things.
RKS: One of the reasons why I am a perpetual fan and I will always read your work is I can tell how much you love Black women. Or just like how much you love people, generally. You are so careful in how you are writing folks, in a way that you—I don’t necessarily know that everyone takes the power of language as seriously as you should. And you are certainly one of those people who understands what damage can be done but at the same time, how much you can love someone with your words. I will always be a fan for that reason.
SW: That came from Toni Morrison. I’ve read her work and I know sometimes her work can be a little difficult for folks to read because of how she writes. But language is so important to her. I believe it was when I really started to listen to her lectures and her talks to get a better understanding of her as an author and her approach, something that always stuck out to me was how she would talk about good and evil. That evil, in itself, is boring. It actually needs a top hat and needs a song and dance because there’s nothing really thrilling about it, it’s just destruction. It’s spectacle.
But good? People often find it boring, because it’s hard to write about good. It’s hard to get people to be enthralled by that, even though goodness is probably the hardest thing you could do as a human being because it’s an active choice every single time. The lack thereof is when evil is really able to creep in. I want to be careful about how I handle people because human life is very precious to me across the board. And of course there’s some folks where I’m like, “Whew, maybe I’ll just turn a blind eye to that.” But on the whole, life is precious. It really is.
We’re not here for a very long time. It’s very important that we make the most of that. For me, going out and being in the world and experiencing it is very much a part of that, and that’s what I want to bring to the books and the stories that I write. I want to bring those experiences and hopefully inspire others to connect, go out into the world, and really just do better about being a better citizen on this planet. Because we don’t have anywhere else to go. We don’t have anyone else but us. And I think it’s very important we keep that in mind. We don’t always have to agree, and of course there’s range to that, but at the very, very least, I think we should see each other as neighbors, in its purest form.
RKS: I get the sense from you, both in your work and how you’re speaking to me now, and that what you value is community. Creating in community is really important to you. Comics is a collaborative medium anyway, but it is something that you hold in high regard. What has it meant to create in community with other Black women, or just people that you find intellectual partnership with, which can also be its own struggle; you know, finding your people period?
SW: I think I value sisterhood so much because I didn’t have any sisters. I come from a family of seven, six boys, I’m the only girl, and I’m pretty much the eldest. I have an older brother, but I might as well be the eldest. Because of that, I gravitate so much so to other Black women, and women in general, because I don’t enjoy being the only. I do not enjoy that. It’s nice to be in community with those you don’t really have to explain yourself, because they get it already. And I think it’s important to be able to pour into others and for others to pour into you.
Nobody is bigger than the program. That’s another reason why community is important to me, because when you’re not at your best, you don’t have to worry about being on all the time. There’s somebody who can take that burden—it’s a passing of the same twenty dollars that artists share with one another. Because you get it. You get that creating itself can be very isolating, so when you’re able to find a commonality with a fellow creator and you click, that’s something that is sacred to me, just because of how special it is. It speaks to something that maybe we don’t engage in so much these days because we’re all so connected but it causes us to be so isolated.
When you really lean into community and you really believe in that, it makes it really hard for outside forces to convince you that there’s only room for a few. That is a lie. Scarcity is a lie. That scarcity mindset only harms. It does no good; there is no win if it’s just you. That’s why for this Eisner nomination, I don’t see it as a personal win. I see it as a broader win because I’m hoping that because I’ve been seen in this way, it gets people to say, “Hm, if we found this Stephanie Williams, there’s gotta be some more, just different variations of her.” If this Black woman has stories that gripped us and enthralled us, then we should be looking at more in this space.
RKS: You’re prolific, you’ve got stories everywhere. Especially since as you’ve said, you’ve tapped often at Big 2, because those are the names people are familiar with, but you have published Big 2, you’ve done indie, you’ve self-published your own projects, you’ve done anthologies, you just dropped an announcement today for Archie comics! From a craft standpoint, but also just from a self-management standpoint, how do you prioritize which stories you want to tell? How do you decide where they’re going to go? What happens once you get that initial spark of an idea when you know it’s going to turn into something?
SW: It is a very strategic approach. And I know for a lot of folks, because I am so prolific and I am everywhere, it might seem like I’m just doing whatever just because, but that’s not the case. I quickly knew very early on, because people rarely want to listen to Black women let alone read them, that I was going to have to flood the market. I was going to have to do so by anthologies, one shot stories, minis, because the comic landscape, just the media landscape in general, has changed, and things aren’t going for a very long time. There aren’t a lot of comics ongoings for a multitude of reasons, but whatever those reasons are, I knew that I had to keep that in mind.
When the idea comes to me, if it’s something that will get in an anthology, I have a running list of things that will work for an anthology, for a limited series, for the Big 2, indie, and so on. From there, now that I’m learning the industry a little bit more and how things get greenlit and how things get made, I make sure I stay ready so I don’t have to get ready. This industry is really feast or famine, so you don’t know when your next opportunity is going to come, so you need to be thinking of your next opportunity while you’re working on the one you just started. I’m always forward thinking. I think that speaks to the instability of the industry but also at the same time, to I guess the instability on top of being a Black woman in this space, people are already not checking for you unless it’s for a very specific thing. I know that my bills are 365 and not just February and not just Juneteenth. And so because of that, the stories that I tell, one I just love storytelling, but also it’s very important to show that I’m capable of telling a story that is cohort, that is engaging, all of these things, no matter the genre, no matter the story length—whether it’s a 22 page one shot, a 5 or 6 page issues, a graphic novel, whatever, to show craft wise I can do it and I can get it done.
It’s opened doors, because there is no job too big or too small, because to me, it’s all practice. The only thing I’m trying to do is get better. When certain opportunities come, I’m ready for them. It’s very important to me how I show up, not that I just show up, because sometimes you only get one shot. You only get one chance and for me, I’m always swinging for the fences. I’m trying to hit a home run. I know that if I put that level of effort into everything that I do, that the worst thing that happens is that it doesn’t pan out but I did learn something from it and I can apply it to the next thing. By being all over the place, be it, telling middle grade, young readers to middle grade to YA to adult, it’s also important because who knows? There could be a young reader who reads my work today and then years from now, they’re a young adult and they’re able to find a story of mine that speaks to them where they are currently in their life. There are few authors that I personally love that I’ve been able to follow for a very long time because their stories have been able to meet me wherever I am in life, and I would like to be that type of author in comic books, if possible.
[Comics is the] perfect medium for that because there is a range in the type of stories that you can tell. Prolific, because the most radical thing a Black woman can do is refuse to play it small. And this is my way of doing that.
RKS: For folks who are just learning about your work, where would you recommend they jump in?
SW: I would tell them Living Heroes. Living Heroes is a fan comic, it’s one that I kickstarted and it funded in a little over twenty four hours which surprised me, because I felt it was very niche. It is taking Black Marvel heroines that a lot of people didn’t know beyond Storm, and setting them in a sitcom like setting: Living Single. It’s a comic that is, one, fun, and because sisterhood and just seeing Black women commune with one another gave me the opportunity to do that, but it gave me the opportunity to critique the Big 2 landscape, because even though these are Marvel characters, there’s still a critique on DC comics as well. The lack of seeing Black superheroines interact with each other never made sense [to me]. I came from STEM, so any time I saw another Black woman or another Black person in general, it was like, “Oh hey! What floor are you on? Okay, we’re gonna stick together and we have each other’s backs.” Especially when you’re in a field that is predominantly white, that is something I gravitated toward. It’s a critique on that but also it’s a good time and it’s showing Black women being vulnerable, being funny, being a mess, being all these well rounded things that were lacking for some of these characters at the time that I wrote them. For some of them, it’s changed since then. I think this maybe speaks to the increasing goodness in the comic landscape that this comic, I would probably not write it today.
Living Heroes is what I would recommend because you can read it for free on globalcomix.com, I think they have an app now. That would give people a really good start for how I approach storytelling and what they can expect from my other work.
RKS: You have so many great stories: Roots of Madness, Temporal—which is your other Eisner nomination but there’s so much! What star do you have your eye on next? Anything you want to manifest?
SW: I would like to manifest either joining a writers room for an animated series or being an animated show of my own making. Of course, I can’t draw so I will need a very talented artist to collaborate with. But that’s the thing I think is up next for me or I know is up next for me. Comics is always going to be home. I will never not make comics, but I wanna broaden where my stories are so people can discover them.
There’s some horror on the way from me as well, actually an exploration into Black male masculinity. I really love bell hooks’ work and I don’t think people realized how much she loved Black men even though they sometimes don’t see that through her work, which I don’t understand. I have a son. I’m married to a Black man, so it’s very important to me to tell stories where they get to be seen as fully realized people as well and that there’s not just one way to exude your masculinity.
I would also like to break the streak at DC comics: be the first Black woman since Felicia D. Henderson to have an ongoing book in main continuity and I think that will be happening very soon.
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And as of July 2026’s San Diego Comic Con, Williams has already seen one of her wishes come true. She will be writing an ongoing Vixen series at DC beginning in 2027.
Williams’ directive is clear: support her comics work, but also support her peers. Space was limited but other Black women and nonbinary comics creators Williams wants to make sure readers know about include: her collaborator artist Asiah Fulmore, writer Regine Sawyer, Ryan Oakley, Che Grayson and Jamila Rowser. If you’re new to comics, we hope you’ll find an entry point in Williams’ work or some of these other fantastic crerators.
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