We were lucky to catch up with Tanisha Chambers recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tanisha , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Well, for years I wanted to be a children’s author and I would spend lots of time first reading children’s books to see the different styles of writing, to learning why certain books were selected for a particular age group. Also taking notice of how many of the books had animals as characters to how many books a black protagonist characters. In addition to reading I had to figure out if I wanted to be an indie author or wanted to be represented by a publishing company. So lots of research and reaching out for help to other authors to help me on my path.

To be honest I could have stopped overthinking each step and maybe working with someone that had the experience I was looking to gain would have speed up my process. My writing ability was the most helpful for me. Monetary stood in my way of learning more in the sense when it came to the right illustrator I didn’t have the funds to hire 5 illustrator to see which one would best work for my projects.

Tanisha , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Well this is always a hard questions to answer. I am from Philadelphia coming from a Jamaican background and I always enjoyed mainly writing pottery, until my little sister zuri was born is when I gained more interested to write my first book. I currrently have 3 children books , 1 coloring book with the story and I have also produced 2 journals for kids. I’m also helping zuri with her own children’s books which we hope to release by the middle or end of summer.

Each of my books I teach a lesson to kids
Zuri and the monster is a fun book, however my lesson in that book is to teach children to FEAR < Dream More because with writing first book I had to be fearless in my dreams

Zuri’s Day of pranks is fun book that kids always love a good prank so I teach kids what’s a good or bad prank.

Beauty Defined by me is a book that reassures young girls to love themselves and to be kind and encouraging to others as well. Even though my books is for little girls I tell parents it’s a good book for little boys to read and remind them how little girls should be treated

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal originally was to just do something that’s I love to do and that’s write, however it did change when I noticed the lack of diverse children’s books that highlight black children in books. So I love to go around to do story time that they are able to meet a real life children’s author and be able to ask me questions on my journey and future plans . So I no longer really do it for me anymore.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I really wish that I would have spent more time with learning more about social media. It’s a hate love thing with me and social media . Learning to create my own marketing materials can be a hassle at times and I find myself up late creating post and coming up with ideas that I can have content to post and get the word out about my business. So something to this day I’m working on.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Zuriadventuresbooks
• Facebook: Zuriads
• Twitter: Iammizzchambers