this.

there we were, there we'll be

Camille — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:45:03 GMT

On my heaviest days I look to photos of my favorite writers basking in joy. Toni Morrison dancing at Studio 54. James Baldwin getting down with the hitchhike. Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka dancing at the New York Public Library. These evidences of joy are my muses to continue writing but, moreso than that, to be present in living my life.

Black joy is th…

How to Give a Black History Month Keynote

Camille — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 13:40:33 GMT

I was invited to do the keynote address at for the sixth annual Black History Month celebration for Anaheim Union High School District. This is the high school district I attended during my tender teenage years. The event was held at the high school I graduated from. I decided that I would write a speech that took our understanding of Black history and …

Motherlands Virtual Book Launch with Galleyway

Camille — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:02:49 GMT

When I was planning my book launch for Motherlands I knew I wanted to support the organizations that have been supporting my career. The first organization I decided to collaborate with was Galleyway, a Black woman owned organization and consulting agency. Started by Camille Wanliss, Galleyway champions diverse voices in poetry, literature, television, …

Poetry is Grassroots Organizing

Camille — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:23:49 GMT

I had the good fortune of being interview on ’s Writing Remix Podcast. We talked about poetry, grassroots organizing, and making writing accessible to others. I’m quite proud of this conversation on the everything that poetry is to our society.

the moon held me closer than the pulpit

Camille — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 12:03:15 GMT

I’m someone fascinated with the idea that the angels have their own language. I often wonder if a part of the ancestral journey is to rise into the language as if one were breaching the water’s surface. And I’m fixated on the scenes in every religious text when the angels spoke to humans: did they speak in the human’s native language or did they speak i…

blueprint to survive gaslighting

Camille — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 22:06:08 GMT

blueprint to survive gaslighting

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

The most important thing we can do right now is tell the truth.
The most important thing we can do right now is tell the truth.
        most important
The most
                 important thing
       most important                                        now
                                                                 …

Camille's favorite books of 2025

Camille — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 12:31:28 GMT

Hi everyone in substacklandia,

It’s my favorite time in substack land: the book round up. For the past few years I’ve loved reading other folks’ reading roundup, but I didn’t think to give it a try. Welp, I’m trying it now. I hope your next bookstore visit includes one or two recommendations from me.

it's "she cooked that" season

Camille — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 13:02:06 GMT

My Filipina mom has Thanksgiving in a clutch hold. She’s the one making the spread for the entirety of our Filipinx family. She has a thick binder with the words “In the Kitchen with Pellie” printed along the cover. She has special Thanksgiving pots. One year, my cousins and I tried to cook a thanksgiving meal potluck style for the aunties and uncles and my mom secretly cooked her usual spread and surprised us with it.

My mom is very proud of the fact that she learned how to cook the cuisine of my father’s Mississippi upbringing. Her pride honors his lineage and holds it with the type of grace that refuses to appropriate.

Growing up as a mixed race girl means that I’ve been exposed to a lot of the ways people assume exoticism is allowed in romantic relationships or familial bonds. Statement like, “I married into this family and now I eat ___ whenever I want” or “We stopped eating ___ because of my spouse” are things I hear regularly. I stopped trying to wonder about the layers of consequence behind those statements. This is why you won’t find me at a lot of mixed race, interracial, or biracial social gatherings. I find it unfair that I have to use so much brain power to filter out or disregard the racisms.

If the pathway to a person’s heart is through their stomach, then food they choose to fill that stomach will reveal their bias (and the problematic ways they talk about said bias).

found found on Pinterest

Now that I’m the mother of a Black, Filipinx, and Mexican family I do my best to turn my kitchen into the holy place where our ancestors commune through my hands in our flavors. There are certain elements of soul food cooking that I have to find, discover, or be taught about — things that got lost in translation when learning how to cook from a person who doesn’t share the history in their bloodlines. I’m learning the medicinal elements of each dish, their hoodoo origins, the histories in the DNA of these seeds. In the same vein, if I don’t learn the survival elements of the Filipinx dishes my mama teaches me then my children will loose an element of the survival traditions we inherit in our food. We took scraps and made feasts that turn the world envious. We kept our bodies strong and our minds sharp because we embraced the forsaken meats and nourished ourselves from what the land provides. To lose those historical realities is to low a piece of ourselves.

I don’t care for Thanksgiving because of the lie built its foundation, but I’ll eat. To me, Thanksgiving is my mother and she is so much of what I give thanks for. As the years go by, she asks me for my recipes: turkey mole, caldereta tamales, pickled jalapeño hushpuppies, sinigang dry rub. I’m delighted by this exchange of intergenerational and intercultural recipe sharing between mother and daughter. We are a history book of flavors, textures, and glorious survival.

Things in this country are terrible and beyond recognition, but despite it all, I hope you have the ability to grasp for the type of joy that can only be found in close relationships where you are seen, heard, and known. May you thrive and know deep gratitude for each day you flourish.

Paid subscribers get a special gift with this post: a recipe made by me

suspicious of the cool

Camille — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 14:39:58 GMT

We moved into our new house over the summertime, just before the heatwave. This house has no air conditioning, and the property manager let us know there’s no immediate plans to install one. The heatwave came after we unpacked our things and tried to make a home out of this house. My husband prioritized putting up window AC units to protect the kids and…

Got a minute?

Camille — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:08:06 GMT

I’m currently in the throes of planning my book tour for Motherlands. There will be additional projects that come with it that I’m very excited to share with you all. But, for now, I’m figuring out how to be present on substack and sustaining this community while doing book promotion and traveling. I created a survey for free and paid subscribers to fil…

& you become the flame

Camille — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 11:02:40 GMT

i wrote this essay with one specific theme in mind. Midway through, I ended up making some loopty-loops and interesting choices. what I now know of this essay is that it’s an unintentional sibling to a previous essay I wrote about fire. Part one was about preparing for the fire (written during the LA wildfires). This essay, an unintentional part two, is…

The Final Scene

Camille — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 11:54:17 GMT

hi everyone, I’m taking a departure from the usual stuff I write on substack to share a flash fiction I wrote. I’m looking forward to sharing more flash fiction and creative writing with you all.

TW: This story contains violence against women and religious trauma

fascism is hungry, all I got is some crisco and a pantry full of words

Camille — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 11:03:21 GMT

I made this digital collage!

Fascism is a hungry machine, fueled by the narratives of utopia. To survive, fascism must devour the delusion that idealized societies will thrive. It circulates one narrative that is comprised of overlapping forms of bigotry: the master race, the Christian nation, male domination, etc. Fascism wants you to believe that the s…

Why I wrote Motherlands

Camille — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:18:47 GMT

The first rule in writing a book for traditional print is to not chase the trends.

Trust your intuition and write the story/poem/memoir in your heart. Follow where your creativity leads you. Don’t write a story because some article in a big named publication is saying that genre is having a moment. It takes up to two years from the time a manuscript is f…

Keep a Bet in Your Pocket

Camille — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 18:56:30 GMT

A couple months ago, I took myself on a date to a 100 year old art museum. During that time, I saw a man who looked a lot like the CEO in their pamphlet.

So I walked up to this man and asked if he’d be interested in hosting a literary salon at their museum. He was reluctant in his yes, so I made a bet: if I can bring in an audience of at least 20 people…

I am a substack failure

Camille — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:10:57 GMT

Gather round, children. Let me share some ~~humiliating~~ vulnerable things with you:

This is a message for all my goal setting pals out there on Beyonce’s internet. I’m a goal setter. In most cases I’m a goal getter… MOST cases. One exception is social media: I fail at social media.

“Side Eye” by Danille Simon

Technically, there’s no universal standard for so…

happy Sealy Challenge to all who celebrate

Camille — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 17:47:57 GMT

It’s August, which means it’s my birthday month. How do I celebrate me? By reading an incredible amount of poetry, monologuing about what I read, then getting a certificate to celebrate all I’ve read. Welcome, everyone, to the Sealy Challenge.

new book alert

Camille — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 11:03:03 GMT

hello beautiful people of substack,

I have a new book coming out! It’s a poetry chapbook entitled Motherlands. It was a finalist in Finishing Line Press’ New Women’s Voices chapbook competition. I’m really proud of this project and I’m looking forward to sharing more about it with you all in the weeks ahead. Scroll down to learn more.

about this book:

Moth…

river wisdom

Camille — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 11:02:42 GMT

Let's Be Real for a Second

Camille — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 11:30:57 GMT

I can’t tell you how many times I rage scribbled in my writing journals. Truly. I can’t tell you because I ripped those pages out and tore them into tiny pieces. I probably burned them or burried them under my newly planted avocado tree because I need the land to help me decompose them. Things are rough and exhausting.1 Sometimes it feels like all I can …