Meet Antonia Royal Whitmore | Author & Owner of Publack Library Publishing

We had the good fortune of connecting with Antonia Royal Whitmore and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Antonia, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Publack Library Publishing is a publishing house dedicated to diversifying the literary industry with representative, relatable, & accurate storytelling. We help our community by publishing quality literature featuring main characters of color, written by authors of color, for readers of color. We believe reliability in books can reinforce and motivate youth to read more and read longer. As literacy is a direct reflection of a person’s quality of life, our books are assisting with improving the overall quality of live in youth.
Publack Library Publishing also strives to make books more accessible and inexpensive through community partnerships. Individuals, businesses, & organizations have the opportunity to support youth literacy by sponsoring books to a classroom or school of their choice. If you’d like to be a sponsor, please email info@publacklibrary.org

What should our readers know about your business?

In middle school, I always loved the thick vampire book series like Night World and House of Night. These books were captivating, creative, and sensual. But in most cases, the characters, the storylines, and the authors weren’t reflective of my life and environment. Eventually, the unreliability in literature turned me off so much, I completely stopped reading for leisure. Fast forward to the summer of senior year at Midland University, I had a dream that people were lined up, waiting for me to sign a copy of their book, that I wrote. That next morning I started writing my first book, despite my passionate dislike for English, grammar, and spelling.
After ten published projects, we expanded into a publishing house, Publack Library Publishing. We believe that relatable, reflective, and accurate storytelling that is accessible and affordable can completely shift the illiteracy epidemic.

Our main focus is children’s literature that highlights social emotional development, however we publish all genres. Our catalog consist of complete representative literature- books featuring main characters of color, written by authors of color, for readers of color. Many books currently on the shelves of bookstores, libraries, and classrooms don’t classify as complete representative, which sets us apart from other publishing houses. In addition, we use innovative ideas to make each book unique with different illustrators, bilingual translations, and activity pages.

Our ultimate goal is to build at-home-libraries for underrepresented and underprivileged youth in urban communities.

Publack Library Publishing is a community driven company. We donate books to non-profits, schools, and families. We often volunteer our time at community events, school visits, and sponsor other organizations.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I absolutely love the African American Museum of Music and a restaurant called Cone Heads!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My shoutout goes to my family. My family has always supported me in all of my endeavors, adventures, and ideas. I would like to give a special shoutout to my grandparents Gloria and Morris Royal for fully funding my first two books and continually investing in me and my vision.

Website: Www.publacklibrary.org

Instagram: instagram.com/publacklibrary

Linkedin: Antonia Royal Whitmore

Facebook: Publack Library