When Angela Cox-Williams was growing up in Faunsdale, she loved to write.

Mostly, she wrote poetry not just for the fun of writing but also as an emotional outlet.

After graduating from A.L. Johnson High School in 1981, she went to college, studying two years at Concordia before transferring to Stillman, where she earned her degree in business administration as well as encouragement to publish her works.

“When I went to college, my teacher said, ‘Instead of just writing poems and letting them lie around, do something about it.’ So, I started writing them and sending them off.

“I entered a poetry contest when I was in college and unbeknownst to me, I won. My friends urged me to go see if I won, and I thought I hadn’t won. We went into the gymnasium and sat on the top bleacher, and they announced my name.

“That really encouraged me,” she said. “When I got older, instead of just writing poems and letting them lie around, I decided to do a book. I thought that it shouldn’t be hard to do, and I found out it wasn’t.”

Her first publication, “Poetry of a Forgiven Heart,” is a collection of her poems.

“I just love to write; it’s one of my passions,” she said. “I wrote the poetry book because I was going through a divorce, so one of the main reasons I did that was because it was like a therapy for me. Instead of going to a psychologist, I just wrote out my feelings, and maybe it could benefit someone else. It wasn’t to lash out at someone; it was just getting my thoughts out, and it helped me.”

Her second publishing venture is a children’s book, “The Missing Vowel,” which helps children learn their vowels in a fun and entertaining way, something she created at her current position as a teacher’s assistant at Parkwell Elementary School in Port St. Lucie, Fla., working with special needs children, a job she’s had since 1997.

“I love it!” she said. “Mostly, I work with kindergarteners, but usually, I work with K through 5. We try to teach the kindergarteners a lot of things before they move up to first grade.

“I was looking in a book one day, and I thought, ‘I know a way to get them to learn their vowels.’ I just made a game up and decided to write about it. It was a game like Hide and Seek.

“If I can help one kid — of course, I want to help more — but if I can help one kid, at least I know that my work has been accomplished,” she said.

Both books were published under the name she had at the time, Angela Cox-Sands.

People can order her books online if they search under that name. She has since gotten married to Dennis Williams.

She is now working on a third book, a novel involving romance and suspense. She is keeping other details of her latest work to herself.

Another reason Cox-Williams wants to write is to encourage others from this area to follow their talents and pursue their dreams.

“I want to be an inspiration to them,” she said. “If you want to be a writer, the best thing to do is to read. When I was growing up, there were a lot of people telling me that ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ but you’ve got to keep in your mind what you want to do and go after it. Whatever you set your mind on doing, go after it. Don’t let anyone discourage you. If I had listened to people who said, ‘You’re not going to do this, you’re not going to amount to that,’ I probably wouldn’t have.

“Don’t let anyone else tell you what you can’t do. They can tell you, but you know what you want to do.”

Cox-Williams still comes home often to visit family and friends, including her sister, Dorothy Jones, in Demopolis.

Angela Cox-Williams is another shining example of how people from this area can be successful.

Her message to others is that success doesn’t look at where people are from; it goes to those who seek it the most, no matter where they are from.