Juliana Pache often lost herself in Paley Library’s tall shelves during her work-study as a student at Temple, captivated by the vast array of books and their infinite potential.
“The library was everything to my learning,” said Pache, a 2014 media studies and production alumna.
Pache turned that captivation into Black Crossword, a free daily online crossword puzzle with answers centering on the Black diaspora. She publishes a new crossword each day and recently scored a two-book deal with Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, and released Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora in August. The second book of the deal will be released in the summer of 2025.
Pache paved her own educational path as a first-generation college graduate. She created Black Crossword without prior experience in puzzle building, inspired by the New York Times Mini Crossword’s stumping clues.
Temple’s educational outlets allowed her to explore that determination, creativity and expression, she said.
Pache was the head of social at Rolling Stone Magazine prior to founding Black Crossword. Her Temple degree, she says, armed her with the ethics needed to engage with the legacy magazine’s audience online, an experience she feels has helped her build timely crosswords.
“Having that relationship to media and the news is really invaluable when it comes to creating a crossword,” Pache said.
Pache said being sensitive to current events inspires clues for her daily puzzle on her website.
While journalistic ethics guide her crossword creation, Pache applies her social media skills from Rolling Stone Magazine to Black Crossword. She promotes the daily puzzle to Black Crossword’s 2,500 followers on Instagram and 601 followers on X by posting two clues from the day’s puzzle. Engaged followers comment answers to a clue in Instagram comments and can subscribe to her email newsletter on the website.
She creates her crosswords favoring the Black experience and promotes them on social media. Along with sourcing information for Black Crossword from her work-study at Paley Library during her time as a student, Pache’s personal shelves have always been an accessible information source to her friends.
Candice Grevious, Juliana’s friend from freshman year, remembers the heaps of books piled in her freshman dorm. Grevious says Pache’s dedication to learning has always swelled into a desire to share knowledge with others.
“She would allow anybody to come in and take from her library,” said Grevious, a 2014 marketing alumna. “Which was really the library’s library, and be able to read any books they wanted that explored Black history and understanding more of the Black diaspora.”
While at Temple, Pache used books as a means to connect, frequently lending and recommending literature to her friends and peers. Sharing this knowledge was a natural way for Pache to relate to those around her.
As her career progressed, Pache developed Black Crossword as an outlet for her passion of learning and a means to stimulate minds and increase awareness of the Black diaspora — two things she received from Paley Library during her time at Temple, she said.
Although Paley Library closed in May 2019, Charles Library which opened later that year, aims to continue the services Pache found so fulfilling. Instead of the brutalist architecture that sheathed Paley’s bookshelves, Charles has an open-concept workspace with bookshelves relegated to the fourth floor.
“Access to knowledge and culture is what we do,” said Joe Lucia, Temple’s dean of libraries. “That mission endures whether it’s in book form or digital form.”
Pache’s creation of Black Crossword didn’t surprise Grevious because she had always been a supportive resource for them in college.
“That’s what you loved about her,” Grevious said. “She was always dropping knowledge on you.”
Pache still references her class readings for the crossword. Though she loved her media studies courses, most of her inspiration for Black Crossword comes from her sociology and African American studies courses.
The required readings were not her sole priorities, but the supplemental readings and the books she picked up at Paley Library painted a better portrait of the education she received at Temple.
“I was learning via the readings I was assigned, but what added so much color to everything was the reading I was doing on my own,” Pache said.
Pache embraces the library’s spirit of inspiration and connection — a spirit that extends beyond her circle of friends and into her work. Paley’s book stacks encouraged curiosity, but Pache personified it.
“Books are an important part of what a library does, but a library is also a place that provides a lot of other opportunities for people to do things and connect with each other,” Lucio said.
Like the benefits of a library, Pache was open to connecting with people and being a resource.
“I love what words can do,” Pache said. “I love what Black language can do.”
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