Current Board
Editor-in-Chief
Layla Williams
​Layla Williams (she/they) is a junior majoring in English with a minor in TV and Film from New Jersey. She has had a passion for literature since elementary school. Layla finds joy in exploring diverse narratives and storytelling forms. As the Editor-in-Chief of Sterling Notes, they are dedicated to uplifting Black voices, amplifying the creative expressions of their peers, and fostering a platform where all stories can be heard and celebrated.
Managing Editor
Kiarra Thompson
Kiarra Thompson (she/they) is a senior Film major from Montgomery, Alabama. They enjoy film editing, and they favor essay, prose, and poetry. Their writings explore Blackness, queerness, sex, systems, and spirituality. Kiarra serves as the Managing Editor for Sterling Notes.
Akofa D. Bruce
Akofa D. Bruce (she/her) is a senior Political Science major and Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies minor from the Bronx, New York, and Accra, Ghana. As she works towards becoming an established multimedia journalist, she stays dedicated to community, advocacy, and education on campus as a proud member of HU’s International Pals (IPALS) and the African Students’ Association. She works as the Community Outreach and Communications Intern at Howard’s Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership, and served as the President and a correspondent of the HBCU-Africa Correspondents Corps under the Center for African Studies. She is constantly looking to work and grow with fellow journalists, writers, and creatives committed to highlighting the ever-changing spectrums of life.
Bria Charlton
Bria Charlton (she/her) is a senior Honors English major with a minor in Media, Journalism, and Film from Silver Spring, Maryland here at Howard University. She is currently engaged in undergraduate research for her Honors thesis that looks at Black authorial depictions and understandings of whiteness from the 20th century. She hopes to continue her studies in grad school.
Chinwe Uzoije
Chinwe Uzoije (she/her) is a freshman Clinical Lab Science major from Harleysville, PA by way of Abia State, Nigeria. She's had a strong passion for literature and writing since she was young & she's honored to serve as a first-year editor for the Sterling Notes. Chinwe enjoys all forms of writing but shines best when she can dissect the multifaceted aspects of her identity as a black woman, a Nigerian-American, and so much more. She's so excited to join the team & can't wait to help uplift other writers!
Editor
Keshawna Washington
Keshawna (she/her) is an honors sophomore history major, economics minor at Howard University from Nashville, Tennessee. She plans to pursue her PhD in history and research Black economic health and the Black Panther Party using diaries, oral history, and newspaper articles. Keshawna enjoys reading, thought-provoking conversations, and watching Chinese dramas!
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Editor
Lyric Hoover
Lyric Hoover (she/her) is a freshman English major from Atlanta, GA by way of New Orleans, LA. She is a staff writer for the Hilltop Investigative Section and a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow. In her free time, she enjoys creative writing, reading, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Editor
Ariella Manuel
Ariella Manuel (she/her) is a junior Philosophy major from Flint, Michigan. She enjoys creativity in any medium that finds her, but writing is the foundation upon which her other interests are based and expressed. Her fiction and nonfiction writing, whether prose, poetry, narrative, or essay, explores the self, Black womanhood, morality, and any character or story floating around her mind at any given time. She is fascinated with capturing the intricacies of life as she contemplates and experiences them with the hopes of eventually passing on the knowledge she's gained along the way.
Graphic Design Editor
Kidist Habte
Kidist Habte (they/them) is a senior Film major and a multi-disciplinary, experimental artist in exile. Through the cinematic arts, photography, and writing, Kidist's artistic practice makes use of traditional African storytelling and folklore to observe and express the realities of Black folks on the margins. Their work emphasizes the conditions of colonialism, displacement, gender, and class.
Advisor
Sean Pears
Sean Pears's academic research focuses on literature and rhetoric in the United States, particularly the aesthetics and politics of Reconstruction. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in English Literary History, The Arizona Quarterly, and The Emily Dickinson Journal. He has also published reviews and essays in Jacket2, The Denver Quarterly, Fanzine, and elsewhere. His edited collection of essays about poetics at the University at Buffalo, At Buffalo: The Invention of a New American Poetry (2020), was published by Lake Forest Press.
Advisor
Kimberly Collins
Kimberly A. Collins is the author of a book of poems, Bessie’s Resurrection (Indolent Books, 2019), and a book of essays, Choose You! Wednesday Wisdom to Wake Your Soul (CreateSpace, 2017). She attended Spelman College and holds a BA from Trinity University, a MA in American and African American literature from Howard University and MFA in poetry from Spalding University. Collins’s poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Black Magnolias, Berkeley Poetry Review, and the Women Artists 2017 Datebook, and in the anthologies Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora, The Nubian Gallery, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks, and 50/50: Poems and Translations by Womxn Over 50. Collins is a Callaloo Fellow, and teaches English and creative writing at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Her poem, “Remember My Name” has become a staple of annual Domestic Awareness Month observances.
