Black Maple Magazine Launches Publishing and Productions Branches: We Built Our Own Table

For months, I’ve been working behind the scenes to create and launch two monumental passion projects: Black Maple Magazine Productions and Black Maple Magazine Publishing.

As most of you know from experience, systemic exclusion isn’t isolated to Hollywood and #OscarsSoWhite. The exact same lament can be directed at a myriad of institutions, including medicine, law, banking, and academia. But today, I want to single out the mainstream publishing industry, which almost never centres Black Canadian voices, stories, protagonists, or perspectives.

From the very beginning, my vision for Black Maple Magazine Publishing was radically different. With groundbreaking titles across genres, we are not just pulling up a seat at the racist mainstream publishing table—we have chopped that table up and used it for firewood. Yes, friends, we have built our own table!

Those of you who know me from my academic work might be surprised that I am launching Blood and Water: A Love Story, the stunning debut romance novel by breakout talent Andrea Ramirez. Do we need the intellectual rigour of Joe the Pressman and A Time, a Place, Our Gaze? Yes, absolutely. But do we also deserve sensual escapism and romantic storytelling that finally places protagonists who look, speak, think, and act like us at the very centre of the universe? Without question.

What I know about Black people—a truth which white media routinely denies—is that we are profoundly multi-dimensional. Like Black Maple Magazine itself, we effortlessly hold high-end intellectual pursuits and vibrant popular interests within us at the exact same time.

As a scholar who has devoted her life to studying brutal human histories through the lens of Transatlantic Slavery, I can tell you that when it’s time to step away from the archives, the last thing I want to read is more academic texts or even highbrow, fictionalized accounts of historical trauma, however well-written. If I am reading after a grueling research day, it is for pure pleasure, indulgence, and luxury escape.

If you don’t understand the power of a great love story, then you will fail to grasp why the romance novel industry racked up an astounding $1.44 billion in the US alone last year. Out of that massive sum, a mere 3% to 5% of those books actually centre Black protagonists. For those of us of a certain age, we were blessed to experience one of the great heydays of Black romantic literature with icons like Terry McMillan, Eric Jerome Dickey, and the late E. Lynn Harris in their prime.

But just like the wonderful Hollywood films featuring Black American actors, their default setting is African American characters, cultural frameworks, AAVE, and rhythms. While beautiful, those narratives do not encompass the rich, global diversity of the Black Diaspora, which includes the uniquely distinct experiences of people from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Continental Africa.

This means that when hungry for Black romance content, Black Canadian readers have historically turned to African American novels that do not fully mirror our uniquely beautiful cultural, regional, and national inheritances. This is not about blaming the United States; it is not their responsibility to produce stories about Black Canada. It is ours. And it is about time.

Enter Blood and Water’s educated, sophisticated protagonist: Alexandra (Lexy) Peters. She is a gorgeous, Black, locs-wearing, Jamaican-Canadian art consultant who lives in a sleek Queen Street loft in Toronto and returns home to a suburban GTA family home where the aromas of curry chicken, plantain, and rice and peas greet her.

But Lexy’s journey isn’t confined to Toronto. When a high-stakes secret forces her onto an axis with Boston, she finds herself trapped in Room #1207 of the historic Bonaventure Hotel, snowed in by a brutal 1999 blizzard alongside her leading man—the Ukrainian-Canadian labour lawyer, Derek Crane.

To bring this high-stakes tension to life, their love story is accompanied by a custom 13-song original soundtrack from Black Maple Magazine Productions that transforms Blood and Water into a groundbreaking, multi-sensory journey. We are merging literature with the hypnotic, cinematic rhythms of R&B. Get your DistroKid preview of Blood and Water the Soundtrack.

We have also launched an exclusive line of premium Black Maple gear, because a corporate logo this sweet was crying out to be worn.

You can explore all of our game-changing new endeavours—including our high-end apparel, the debut novel, and the official soundtrack—right now at our newly unveiled Black Maple Magazine Shop.

Welcome to the empire.

Follow our journey at our new creative home, @historyrootedculturerising, because we are no longer asking for permission.

History Rooted. Culture Rising. We are building on solid ground.