Alix B. Golden, Atlanta, GA

1. What is your passion in life? My passion in life is writing. It’s the one thing I can always remember doing from the time I was a small child up to today. It’s something I would/am doing without any type of monetary reward. I do it because simply the act of writing makes me feel good.

2. What is your current job? My job as a Product Expert for a software and web design firm keeps the bills paid. I am secretly a techie nerd, so it’s a great fit for me.

3. Do you own your own business? If so, what is the name and the mission? I’m not sure I would call what I do a business. I have two websites, abrowngirl.com and ibleedinkmagazine.com. It’s never been my goal to make money with either site, but that will change in the future.

4. Did you have any fears when first starting your business? When I started my blog (abrowngirl.com), my fear was that no one would read.

5. Did you have any insecurities when first starting your own business? I didn’t think that I would be embraced by other brown girls like me. Honestly, I didn’t know there were other brown girls like me out there. I didn’t know that so many people could identify with my life.

6. Describe your brand in one word. Intimate. When I read things that have been written by others about A Brown Girl, there is a common theme of my readers feeling as though I was having a conversation with them, like we were just sitting around having girl talk. It’s my intimate express of myself to the world.

7. Do you have any past failures that you can tell what you did to learn from them? Anybody with the smallest amount of success has had failures. There is nothing I can say I did specifically to learn from them, it’s just not in my nature to accept any type of failure. If there is something I want to do, just because I couldn’t get it right on the first try doesn’t mean that I will just sit down and never try again. I will always continue to move forward no matter what comes my way.

8. Who are your target consumers? Would you want to change this? When I initially started writing, my target was black lesbians. It wasn’t until after I started writing that I realized that somethings cross the boundaries of race and sexual orientation. Everyone knows what it’s like to fall in love, to fall out of love, to experience pain/loss/happiness/success. My target hasn’t changed and will never change, but my writing now reflects an awareness that no matter who I may target, I can’t control who I attract.

9. What inspires you? I am inspired by stories. I enjoy having conversations with people and hearing their stories. While someone’s story may be completely different from yours on the surface, there is always something there that you can identifiable. That’s what inspires me.

10. Who inspires you? My favorite writer of all time, Toni Morrison. Her words make me feel .

11. What is always at the back of your mind? My responsibility to the community. My responsibility is to share and expose stories, mine and others to help bridge the gaps within our community and between other communities.

12. What do you want to change about your job or career right now? I work with clients on a regular basis. There are times when I feel as though I don’t have enough time to spend with them to make a real impact on their day to day. I’d love to have the flexibility to give them more of me.

13. What advice do you have for others? If there is something you want to do, don’t think about if you should or shouldn’t do it. Just make the decision to do it and figure the rest of it out later. Don’t give yourself the opportunity to talk yourself out of it.

14. How do you motivate yourself? I know what I want to accomplish. I stay focused on my goal.

15. Did you have any obstacles that you overcame to get to where you are now? Of course, but doesn’t everybody?

16. Where can we find you on the web? abrowngirl.com, ibleedinkmagazine.com, facebook.com/alixbgolden, twitter.com/abrowngirl