Sil Lai Abrams is an award-winning writer, anti-gender violence activist, and restorative justice advocate. Since 2007, she has worked to raise awareness of issues affecting Black women, presenting workshops and keynotes at over 300 organizations and universities across the United States. She has been profiled in magazines such as The Hollywood Reporter, EBONY, Redbook, Modern Woman, and ESSENCE, and regularly writes about issues impacting women of color for numerous national outlets, including the Daily Beast, TheGrio, Huffpost, and Marie Claire.

 

Her books, the 2007 self-help tome No More Drama: Nine Simple Steps to Transforming a Breakdown into a Breakthrough, and the 2016 memoir Black Lotus: A Woman's Search for Racial Identity received critical acclaim from numerous literary journals including Kirkus Reviews and the Library Journal. In 2012, her EBONY essay "Passing Strangely" won the National Association of Black Journalists’ “Salute to Excellence Award” in the Commentary/Essay Category as part of the magazine's "Multiracial in America" package.

 

In 2017, Abrams returned to school after a 33-year hiatus when she was selected as a Bryn Mawr College McBride Scholar. She graduated cum laude in 2021 with a degree in political science from Haverford College. Her senior thesis on the applicability and efficacy of restorative justice in cases of sexual violence won The Emerson S. Darnell 1940 Prize, an annual award named in honor of Emerson Darnell, a Quaker alumnus who dedicated his life’s work to advocating peaceful social change and defending the civil rights of the individual. ​A strong believer in community service, Abrams is a former member of the Board of Directors of two of the nation’s largest victim services nonprofit organizations, Safe Horizon and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. 

 

Abrams is an avid skateboarder who rediscovered her passion for the sport post-pandemic. She is currently working on a writing project that takes an interdisciplinary approach to addressing sexual harm.

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