Meet Our Rainmakers: Kathya Alexander

Kathya Alexander became a Rainmaker out of "loyalty toward this organization that I really believed in."

by Amanda Sorell

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Kathya Alexander

Kathya Alexander is an author, playwright, and teaching artist. Her work has appeared in the Emerald for years, and she became a Rainmaker about a year ago, out of "loyalty toward this organization that I really believed in." She says the Emerald's focus on People of Color in a specific area is a unique media offering in this region. "It just focuses on what's happening in South Seattle. … Not exclusively, of course, but it's more diverse in terms of including information about People of Color than any other magazine or publication that I've read since I left the South."

Alexander has been a professional storyteller for decades and has a particular passion for guiding youth in telling their own stories. She has held a summer theater program for youth at the Rainier Beach Community Center for the past four years, and she plans to do so again this summer. She has taught theater programs at Rainier Beach High School and writing workshops for youth at South End churches. She's also deeply rooted in the Seattle storytelling community. As a member of The Creative Advantage, she tells stories in schools throughout South Seattle. And through her membership in both the African-American Writers' Alliance and the Seattle Storytellers Guild, she tells stories across the city and state.

Underscoring her work with youth and her own storytelling is her commitment to teaching about the Civil Rights Movement. Alexander grew up in the South during the 1960s, and that experience has guided her work ever since, from plays to lectures to her forthcoming debut novel, Keep A'Livin', which is a coming-of-age tale set in the South during the Civil Rights Movement.

"I am actually quite appalled by what kids know now about the Civil Rights Movement. What's taught … is that Rosa Parks sat on a bus and Martin Luther King made a speech. And so people kind of think, 'Oh, those two things happened and then Black people got equal rights.' There was decades, if not centuries, of work to get equal rights for Black people. … So it's kind of my mission in life to tell stories about the Civil Rights Movement and have kids understand it. Racism is so built into the fabric of this country. You don't have to teach kids racism, they grow up knowing it. They just don't have the words, nobody has given them the words, usually, to express it, to even ask a question about it. That doesn't mean they don't know what's going on. So I'm really frustrated now about this whole censorship that's going on, and anti-[critical race theory]. … It's kind of just the obliteration of Black history, which is American history."

Outside of teaching and storytelling, Alexander likes to attend performances at the Rainier Arts Center, where she used to be the manager, and she loves eating at the restaurants along Rainier Avenue.

Her speculative fiction book Keep A'Livin' will be released on April 2. On April 9, she'll be at Third Place Books in Seward Park to discuss the book, take audience questions, and sign copies. You can preorder the book at Small Press Distribution and learn more about Alexander on her website.

Amanda Sorell is a storyteller who lives in Seattle. She's an editor for the Emerald. Read her newsletter at eClips.Substack.com.

Featured image designed by the Emerald team; photo courtesy of Kathya Alexander.