We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ava Emilione a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ava, thanks for joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?
Before we launched Ebony Tomatoes Collective, the entire team sat down and discussed what we wanted our impact to be. For me, the most impactful takeaway from that meeting was the idea of preserving stories. I hear a lot of advice to tell and share stories in creative spaces, which is fine and good, but preserving stories is equally if not more important. Telling stories has always been a part of the black community — in this sense, what we do at Ebony Tomatoes is very much in line with our ancestral traditions. However, the stories of the black community have been forcefully buried. Our stories have sunk to the sea with our ancestors jumping off of slave ships, they have dissipated as our native languages have been forgotten, and they have been beaten out of us. On the other hand, since much of our storytelling is rooted in oral traditions, many of our narratives have been forgotten naturally with time or disuse. That being said, I hope our legacy will not only be to tell the stories of black women, but to preserve and protect them so future generations can look back at them and see themselves in us.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Ebony Tomatoes Collective is a multi-media online publication created for and by black women and non-binary people. We are NYC-based and hold in-person community events such as poetry readings and picnics.
Ebony Tomatoes began as a writer’s group I started in Spring 2022 to bring black women and non-binary writers together. As a senior at NYU studying Film and TV and Economics, I noticed a lack of black people in editorial and creative spaces. In this writer’s group, I realized that I wasn’t the only black woman or non-binary person to feel this way — not by a long shot.
From there, I began Ebony Tomatoes as a publication with 8 other young black women and non-binary people, who now constitute our editorial board. Although our entire team is under 25 years old, we are published authors and filmmakers with work featured in the Tribeca Film Festival, New York International Women Festival, Fujifilm Create Forever Students of Storytelling, Washington Square News, North Star Media, Honeysuckle Media, Unplug Collective, NYU Local, NYU Gallatin’s Confluence and more. I am deeply proud of the community of artists, editors and writers we have created.
I believe that Ebony Tomatoes is set apart by our versatility — we accept writing, short films, visual art and photography by black women and non-binary people. Our submissions tend to focus on themes of emotions, identity, family and relationships. We pride ourselves on our accessible and holistic editing process. We accept submissions from all levels of experience. It is completely free to submit your work and will be reviewed and assigned to editor(s) based on their specialty and identity. Our editors work closely with artists and view the process as a collaborative process. Every member of the team is guided by a compass of storytelling, resistance, community, and truth — and we hold our submissions to the same standard.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One lesson I had to unlearn was that I had to do everything alone. Growing up as an only child in a single-mother household, I learned the virtues of independence early on. However, I couldn’t have ever created Ebony Tomatoes Collective by myself. The capitalistic society also rewards rugged individualism and independence at the price of mental health and building meaningful relationships. Focusing on a community-based mindset and accepting the expertise and talent of my family, friends and collaborators not only strengthened this publication but is a testament to the power of mutual aid and community.
In discussions around diversity and inclusion, we must be careful not to default to tokenism. Inclusion does not mean having only one or two black women, or any member of a marginalized group, in a room. Inclusion is mindfully building a community of people that can collaborate and create beauty together. Ebony Tomatoes taught me this invaluable lesson.
How did you build your audience on social media?
As someone studying Film & TV production, I was very aware of how visual storytelling could support and market Ebony Tomatoes Collective. This awareness played a big part in our social media presence and how we connect to our audience. There are many grassroots collectives and publications out there that struggle with social media. My advice for those looking to build a social media presence can be summed up in two words: consistency and stylization.
Before we received our first submission, I onboarded an incredible graphic designer, Aliyah Wallace (IG: aliyah.wallace), to create a logo and brand deck. This deck included the fonts and colors we planned to use across our web and social platforms. I also built a social media team run by myself and two incredibly talented co-founders, Leslie Vargas and Yumna Elhdari. We post on our Instagram 4-6 days a week, as well as on TikTok, and coordinate outreach efforts to artists and businesses. This consistent activity is one of the biggest drivers behind our organic growth. Our intentional and stylized visual palette also made us more recognizable to our audience. This planning not only helped me gain a sense of the brand but continues to pay off as Ebony Tomatoes grows.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ebonytomatoescollective.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ebonytomatoescollective/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ebonytomatoescollective/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ebonytomatoescollective7914/featured
Image Credits
Event Photography: Breonn Lyons iPhone Event Photography: Iman Yusuf