Founded in 2004 | We Will Tell Our Own Story
About UWP
Our Mission
Universal Write Publications publishes rigorous scholarship that reclaims the rich histories of the culturally diverse peoples who make up our society. Our focus is to publish a variety of topics through the framework of Black Scholars who write through the African lens: the lived experiences of the diaspora without compromising the rigor of academic scholarship that dignifies the essence of research, data analysis, and the scientific methods of the academy.
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- Molefi Kete Asante, Ph.D.
- Maulana Karenga, Ph.D.
- Greg Carr, Ph.D.
- Kofi Lomotey, Ph.D.
- Akosua K. Darkwah, Ph.D.
Our Focus
UWP Books is determined to reimagine, raise the bar, and pivot the cultural paradigm on its axis to shift the narrative from Black people being the subject to Black scholars being the authoritative voice and instrument of peoples, cultures, and the social construction of race.
We call on Black Academic Excellence to assert their agency and engage in the liberating act of writing about how other cultures ideas, belief systems, behaviors, fears, thought processes, histories, and lived experiences spill into Blackness and converge into the systematic racism that was woven in the fabric of the global marginalization of Black and Brown peoples.
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- Cheyanne Rosier
- Marc Medley
- Geane deLima
- Ian Clarke
Meet Our Founder
Dr. Ayo Sekai is the founder and CEO of Universal Write Publications, an international social science publisher focused in Black and African-centered works. As scholar activist and practitioner, who advocates for racial equity, and anti-racist publishing, Dr. Sekai uses her platform to help Black Scholars become recognized in their fields of study by creating more inclusive research and narratives that bridge the gap, and dismantle structural racism through the perpetual omission of Black scholarship, address racial inequity in policies, practices, and higher education. As a result of her leadership, impact, and contributions to the academy, Dr. Sekai has leveraged her partnership with SAGE Publishing, a leading global social science publisher, to effect and impact the voice of the diaspora as actors and agents within location theory.
Dr. Ayo Sekai is a Fulbright Specialist, and HBCU alum with research specializations in Black Politics and International Relations. She examines how language is used to impact political agenda, rhetoric, and policies that later become regulated through the legal system, therefore perpetuating policing of the Black body, inequity, inequality, and marginalization, reflected in her research on Linguistic Imperialism and political dog whistle politics embedded to promote structural racism. As an author, inspirational and motivational speaker with more than 20 years in the publishing/print industry, Dr. Sekai provides professional writing, lectures, and engagement to academic institutions interested in strengthening and preparing students of color to publish early while centering their narratives within the various theories and methods that impact scholarship. To #TellOurOwnStory is to strengthen the reclamation of our narrative and empower scholarship across the African Disapora through the interdisciplinary research of resistance, activism, and normative cultural ideology.
Dr. Sekai is a lifetime member of the National Council for Black Studies, National Alliance of Black School Educators, and the National Council for Black Studies.
Our Philosophy
UWP is an intentional repudiation of the frameworks which align with the Eurocentric paradigm of systematic oppression that feeds the deemphasizing of Black Centered Research and Afrocentric quintessence. To #TellOurOwnStory is to strengthen the reclamation of our narrative and empower scholarship across the African Diaspora through the interdisciplinary research of resistance, activism, and normative cultural ideology.
"It is initiated with the intention of contributing to the process of demystification necessary for those of us who would liberate ourselves from European intellectual imperialism." –YORUGU – Marimba Ani
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