Preslaysa Williams

Williams began acting in the early 1990s where she performed under the stage name Presley Edwards. In 1990, she appeared in the Off-Broadway play, The Onliest One Who Can't Go Nowhere at the Ensemble Studio Theatre directed by the acclaimed director Woodie King, Jr and written by J.E. Franklin. She was called "appealing in the central role" by the New York Times.[4]

She played Cindy Ornette on Nickelodeon's The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo from 1996 to 1998, and in 1997 was a panelist on the game show Figure It Out. In 1999, she acted as Gertrude in the Horton Foote play The Death of Papa, which was part of a series of plays called The Orphans' Home Cycle.[7]

In 2017, she appeared on the popular American comedy-drama TV series This Is Us. Williams also played various roles on the American political thriller TV series, Homeland.

In 2020, Williams appeared in the film, Last Moment of Clarity.

In November 2018, Williams released her debut short story, Touched by Fate, the first work in the Lowcountry Bride continuity. In November 2019, Williams released her debut novel, Healing Hannah's Heart, a fictional romance novel. She was included in two Luxe romance anthologies thereafter, in 2018 and again in 2019.

In early 2020, it was announced by Publishers Weekly that Williams had signed a book deal with Avon Books (a romance imprint of HarperCollins) as part of the #OwnVoices initiative. Her first novel under the deal, A Lowcountry Bride, was released June 2021. A sequel was released in 2022, A Sweet Lowcountry Proposal, and a third novel in the series is due in 2024.

In 2020, Williams co-founded Black Catholic Messenger, a nonprofit media publication covering stories of interest to African-American Catholics.[8] She has also written for Literary Hub.[9]

Williams is also founder of Blasian Chic Media, "a lifestyle and literary website that centers and celebrates women of color." This is also the name of the entity under which she published her first two books.