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Caroline Randall Williams

EXCLUSIVE
  • Award-Winning Poet and Author
  • Scholar of Medicine, Health, and Society
  • Host, Disney+'s 'Hungry for Answers'
  • Activist

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Award-winning poet, author, performance artist, and scholar Caroline Randall Williams is a change-maker and a catalyst. She rose to the international stage with her powerful New York Times piece You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument, a reckoning in the movement to dismantle systemic racism. A multi-genre writer, Caroline co-authored the NAACP Image Award-winning cookbook Soul Food Love with her mother, as well as The Diary of B.B. Bright, Possible Prince, which won the Harlem Book Fair’s Phyllis Wheatley Prize. Her debut collection of poetry, Lucy Negro, Redux, has been turned into a critically-acclaimed ballet by the Nashville Ballet and she is the host Disney+’s Hungry for Answers, a docuseries and revelatory cooking show focused on Black food history in America produced by Viola Davis. A highly sought-after speaker, Caroline speaks to the places where art, business, and scholarship intersect, moving people closer to their best lives and corporations closer to their ideal identities.

Recognized as one of The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans and a Nashville Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree, Williams is celebrated for her ability to move seamlessly between page, stage, and screen. Caroline has appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Dr. Oz, among many others, and her writing has been featured in The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Essence, The New York Times, and more. Her recipes can also be found in the feature cookbook for Cherry Bombe, as well as Southern Living Magazine. Caroline regularly receives rave reviews of her speaking engagements, such as: “After you hear Caroline your life will never be the same! And if it is the same… you weren’t listening!” (Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission) 

 


Caroline Randall Williams headshot
Past Hosts Include:
  • Rocket Travel by Agoda
  • Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism
  • The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation
  • Metro Nashville Public Schools
  • The Sycamore Institute
  • Southern Foodways Alliance
  • Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission
  • Baltimore Book Festival
  • Woman of Power Summit
  • CherryBombe Jubilee
Rave Reviews About Caroline Randall Williams
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“Caroline Randall Williams spoke at Creative Mornings Nashville on Inclusivity and had everyone in the audience mesmerized with her talk. She knows how to engage an audience and hit them hard with the truth. A truth they may feel uncomfortable facing or discussing, but a truth they knew all along. Hearing Caroline illuminate each person with these truths leaves the audience feeling unified, ready to help and make changes! After you hear Caroline your life will never be the same! And if it is the same... you weren’t listening!!!”

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More rave reviews

"Thank you very much - Caroline was terrific, and the event was very successful."

-Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism

"It was great! We've gotten a ton of great comments from attendees/viewers. Please let Caroline know that it was phenomenal."

-The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation

"In forty years in public schools, serving as a teacher, principal, I have attended hundreds of author events in elementary and middle schools. Caroline Randall Williams’s Recipe Poem workshop enthralled students and amazed teachers who couldn’t believe how many hard skills she was able to impart-- while being utterly entertaining and truly inspiring to students and faculty."

-Metro Nashville Public Schools

"Want a new and inspiring take on diversity? Invite Caroline Randall Williams."

-The Sycamore Institute

"Caroline Randall Williams is a bold voice, a keen thinker, unbowed by convention. I’ve watched her step to the podium many times to charm and inspire and challenge audiences. She does this work with a joy and serious of purpose that has made her a trusted and beloved collaborator for the Southern Foodways Alliance."

-Southern Foodways Alliance

"Caroline's approach to involving travel in her experience and perspectives was powerful, and the way she told her stories and brought them all together to touch on witnessing, advocating, the Black American experience, the joy of finding inclusion in unlikely places—it was just wonderful."

-Rocket Travel by Agoda
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News Commentary - 'My Patriotism Has A Backbone': Combating GOP's Politics Of Division | MSNBC [4:29] - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Caroline Randall Williams
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Monuments: Places, Events, History, and Future

Award-winning poet, scholar, activist, and teacher CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS – known for her powerful New York Times piece You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument – explores how historical events shape the places we live, impacting not only the past but our present and fut ...

Award-winning poet, scholar, activist, and teacher CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS – known for her powerful New York Times piece You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument – explores how historical events shape the places we live, impacting not only the past but our present and future. Through her own activism, performance art, and writing, Caroline explores the intersections of culture and society, past and place, sharing insights in this compelling talk for audiences of all kinds.

The Body Is the Text: One Woman’s American Narrative

When CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS wrote that her body was a monument, that was only the beginning of the thought. The body does so much work past the work. So much telling past the shape of the thing. From what we feed ourselves, to how we tell the truth of where our bodies have been, what they’ve done ...

When CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS wrote that her body was a monument, that was only the beginning of the thought. The body does so much work past the work. So much telling past the shape of the thing. From what we feed ourselves, to how we tell the truth of where our bodies have been, what they’ve done, so much can be read on the body, of the body’s story. This talk will explore Professor William’s unique take on American identity through this fresh, embodied lens.

Soul Food and Collective Cultural Memory

As award-winning cookbook author, scholar, and amateur restaurateur Caroline Randall Williams shared on the Vox Conversations podcast, “Food is in everything for us. It’s in our history. It’s in how we sit. It’s in how we gather. It’s in how we write, what we wanna write, our political concerns, our ...

As award-winning cookbook author, scholar, and amateur restaurateur Caroline Randall Williams shared on the Vox Conversations podcast, “Food is in everything for us. It’s in our history. It’s in how we sit. It’s in how we gather. It’s in how we write, what we wanna write, our political concerns, our creative obsessions. Food tells stories, and food is about survival and Black joy, for me. And so is everything else I do.” Caroline and her work are featured in the new Disney+ docuseries Hungry for Answers, produced by Viola Davis, in which she uncovers the fascinating, essential, and often untold Black stories behind some of America’s classic and emblematic food and spirits – she shares these stories and her profound insights in this memorable talk.

Inclusivity Re-Imagined

As a Southern activist, author and poet, CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS both celebrates and holds accountable the sentimental legacies of the South. A soul food cookbook author and ambassador, Williams writes lyrically about the South's charms and pride of her community. At the same time, she calls for a ...

As a Southern activist, author and poet, CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS both celebrates and holds accountable the sentimental legacies of the South. A soul food cookbook author and ambassador, Williams writes lyrically about the South's charms and pride of her community. At the same time, she calls for a modern re-imagining of inclusivity, anti-racism and a reckoning of its racist past. With the hope and fresh insights of a millennial generation, Williams helps us re-imagine inclusivity and how to get there.

Inspiration: Making a Life in the Arts

Award-winning poet, performance artist, and scholar CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS creates work across genres exploring the places where art, society, and history meet. In numerous successful collaborations, Caroline has explored the intersections of food and literature, poetry and ballet, and in this co ...

Award-winning poet, performance artist, and scholar CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS creates work across genres exploring the places where art, society, and history meet. In numerous successful collaborations, Caroline has explored the intersections of food and literature, poetry and ballet, and in this compelling talk she shares profound insights about creating your own path, building a foundation for your voice, and sharing your message.

What Poor Children in the Mississippi Delta Know That You Don’t Know

CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS has taught in two of the poorest states in the union - Mississippi and West Virginia - and she has been educated at two of the richest universities on the globe - Harvard and Oxford. After graduating from Harvard University, Caroline moved to Mississippi where she taught pu ...

CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS has taught in two of the poorest states in the union - Mississippi and West Virginia - and she has been educated at two of the richest universities on the globe - Harvard and Oxford. After graduating from Harvard University, Caroline moved to Mississippi where she taught public school on a dirt road in Sunflower County for two years. In Mississippi, Caroline lived in an America many Americans are hardly aware of any longer, an America as rich in culture as it is wretched in poverty, towns still split into white and black by train tracks and bridges. In this talk, Caroline Randall Williams shares the lessons she learned from her students that corporations and privileged communities need to hear.

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Speaker News

Caroline Randall Williams explores identity through food in the Viola Davis-Produced Disney+ docuseries ‘Hungry for Answers’

Award-winning cookbook author, scholar, and restaurateur CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS is featured in the new Disney+ docuseries  , in which she uncovers the fascinating, essential, and often untold Black stories behind some of America’s classic and emblematic food and spirits – she shares these stories and her profound insights in memorable talks. Viola Davis told Variety, “The joy of food is like home. When many people are sharing together it is the most powerful tool for connection. I met Caroline Randall Williams on the set of ‘The Help’ in 2010 and knew she was special. Not only as a cook but as a journalist and critical thinker.” As Williams shared on the Vox Conversations podcast, “Food is in everything for us. It’s in our history. It’s in how we sit. It’s in how we gather. It’s in how we write, what we wanna write, our political concerns, our creative obsessions. Food tells stories, and food is about survival and Black joy, for me. And so is everything else I do.” 

Watch Caroline Randall Williams on Oxford American >>

 

Caroline Randall Williams' talks pull people together, address the heart of situations, and move audiences to come out stronger and more unified on the other side

CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS is known for many things but most recently for her viral piece in the New York Times, “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument.” In it, Williams writes, “I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates…. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named.” A faculty member at Vanderbilt University, William continues to work and speak to the places where art, business, and scholarship intersect. Caroline is an award-winning author of three books, The Diary of B.B. Bright, Possible Princess (co-authored with Alice Randall), Soul Food Love, and Lucy Negro Redux. Constantly pushing the envelope with her poetry, cooking, and writing. In a sentence, she pulls us into the clarifying history of a people, “I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.” Praised by New York Times, celebrities like Viola Davis, and publications like Southern Living, which recognized Caroline as “One of the 50 People changing the South,” Williams closes her opinion piece in the Times with, “I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.” And she’s right.

With speech topics on Culture, Identity, and Genetic Inheritances; on Inclusivity and Diversity, and on a rich history of the South that the world can learn from, Caroline's talks pull people together, address the heart of situations, and move audiences to come out stronger and more unified on the other side. Groups rave, “After you hear Caroline your life will never be the same! And if it is the same... you weren’t listening!!!” (Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission) "Want a new and inspiring take on diversity? Invite Caroline Randall Williams." (The Sycamore Institute) "Caroline Randall Williams is a bold voice, a keen thinker, unbowed by convention. … She does this work with a joy and serious of purpose that has made her a trusted and beloved collaborator for the Southern Foodways Alliance." (Southern Foodways Alliance)

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Books by Caroline Randall Williams
LUCY NEGRO, REDUX: The Bard, a Book, and a Ballet

LUCY NEGRO, REDUX: The Bard, a Book, and a Ballet

Soul Food Love: Healthy Recipes Inspired by One Hundred Years of Cooking in a Black Family : A Cookbook

Soul Food Love: Healthy Recipes Inspired by One Hundred Years of Cooking in a Black Family : A Cookbook

The Diary of B. B. Bright, Possible Princess

The Diary of B. B. Bright, Possible Princess

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Press & Media
Upcoming Discovery+ Series to Feature Local Writer Caroline Randall Williams - Nashville Scene
Viola Davis-Produced Black Food History Docuseries ‘Hungry for Answers’ Ordered at Discovery+ - Variety
Soul Food and the Stories it Tells About America - Vox Conversations Podcast
Created Equal: Caroline Randall Williams on Confronting the Darkness in American History (Podcast) - Detroit NPR
WSU holds 25th annual Martin Luther King Jr. tribute - The South End
Winter Institute to host virtual events for National Day of Racial Healing - WJTV
Award-Winning Poet, Activist Caroline Randall Williams on Dark Moment in History - WDET
A Loving Chastisement for America - New York Times
‘My Body Is a Confederate Monument’: Slavery, Rape and Reframing the Past - New York Times
You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument - New York Times
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Biography

Caroline Randall Williams is a multi-genre writer, educator, performance artist in Nashville Tennessee, where she is a Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University. Host of the Viola Davis produced Discovery +  series Hungry For Answers, she is also co-author of the NAACP Image Award-winning cookbook Soul Food Love.  Her debut poetry collection, Lucy Negro, Redux was published by Third Man Books, and turned into a ballet by Nashville Ballet, with an original score by Grammy award winner Rhiannon Giddens. This production was filmed for PBS’s Great Performances 50th anniversary series, in which Williams performs her poetry as a member of the cast.  Named by Southern Living as “One of the 50 People changing the South,” ranked by The Root as one of the 100 most influential African Americans of 2020, and by Nashville Business Journal’s 2025 class of "40 under 40," the Cave Canem fellow can be heard occasionally offering her two cents on MSNBC, and has been published and featured in multiple journals, essay collections and news outlets, including The Atlantic, Garden and Gun, Essence, and the New York Times.

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