Lance R. Williams / Writer · Archivist · Visual Griot
Telling the stories that live at the intersection of Black culture, memory, gaming, and the places that shape who we become.
Read the WorkPublished Work
RogerEbert.com · Black Writers Week 2026
How a Minolta camcorder, a father's gift, and four years on the Yard became a Smithsonian-credited archive of HBCU history.
Read Essay →RogerEbert.com · Black Writers Week 2025
A decade at Rockstar Games, a face on a cover, and what it meant to finally see yourself as the protagonist.
Read Essay →RogerEbert.com · Black Writers Week 2023
The intergenerational story of music, games, and the things fathers pass down without meaning to.
Read Essay →Colorlines · 2018
Before Wakanda was a blockbuster, it was a lifeline. A personal essay on identity, childhood, and the comics that saw us first.
Read Essay →The Origin Story
Born in Philadelphia, raised between the Bronx, Silver Spring, and Beaver Falls before landing in Long Island in the fourth grade. Every new school was a new world to learn. Every new neighborhood was a new archive to build. He didn't know it then, but all that movement was training.
He graduated from Baldwin Senior High School and went on to Howard University, where he co-founded Power Move, one of the most storied HBCU cultural programming organizations of the 1990s. He graduated with the Class of '96 and never really left.
A decade at Rockstar Games followed, where his digital likeness ended up on the cover of GTA: San Andreas. Then Showtime. Then Paramount+. Then his son was accepted to Howard as a fourth-generation Bison.
His 1990s Howard University footage, shot on a Minolta camcorder his father gave him, is now licensed by the Smithsonian NMAAHC and featured in the "At the Vanguard" exhibit. He is credited as Lance R. Williams, Chief Creative, PMV763 LLC.
He is a writer, photographer, archivist, and Visual Griot. He holds the receipts.
Comics
Long Island roots, spinner racks, and Black Panther before Wakanda was a movie.
Gaming
10 years at Rockstar Games. Senior QA Analyst. His face is on the GTA: San Andreas cover.
Hip-Hop Archive
Rakim. Nas. RZA. Method Man. Shot on a Nikon D810. Largely unpublished. Priceless.
Howard University
Class of '96. Co-founder of Power Move. Father of a fourth-generation Bison.
Long Island
Baldwin High School. Where the roots finally took hold.
Get in Touch
Whether you're a publisher, curator, event organizer, or just someone who found their way here through the work, the door is open.