Two years ago Bryant was in the midst of her ninth year teaching high school English to students with mild to moderate disabilities. She loved her career but was growing tired of having trouble finding good books for her students that featured stories like the ones they were living.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they wanted a character that looked like them, the narratives were focused on trauma or police violence,\u201d she said. \u201cThose stories are important, but we need books that center Black joy and Black love, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her spare time, she started turning the television off and writing instead. It was something she\u2019d loved doing as a kid but had fallen away from as an exhausted teacher and mother of two. Writing a chapter here and there became a way to relieve stress.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was something fun, something to dream about,\u201d she said. \u201cI was doing it just for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January of 2019, she decided to step away from teaching to focus on her daughters, Tallulah and Coretta. At the same time, she\u2019d finished her book, a YA romance with a teenage Black protagonist, a book she described as \u201cfluffy and swoony.\u201d She decided to send it out to agents to see what the response was.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust for fun!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Within an hour she got her first email back from an agent, and quickly she had several offers and a brand new career in front of her. After signing with Taylor Haggerty at Root Literary in March, she revised the book and before she knew it, Haggerty was calling her telling the book had multiple offers from publishers and was going to auction. HarperCollins won the fight for Bryant\u2019s debut book deal in April, just three months after she\u2019d decided to step away from teaching.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved being a teacher, I left not to pursue this but to be there for my family,\u201d she said. \u201cI was in the slush pile, I didn\u2019t have any connections. This has all been beyond anything I could have ever expected. To get paid money for something I did for fun, to have a childhood dream become my career is something I never expected could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Cosmic timing<\/strong><\/p>\n Bryant is the right person in the right place at the right time, a rare piece of cosmic timing where creativity and commerce collide. She finished her book right as the YA fiction landscape was starting to demand more diverse voices, and as the literary world was beginning to throw its doors open to new authors telling new kinds of stories.<\/p>\n \u201cI tried to write the book that I would have wanted as a teenager, and also the book my students were asking me for,\u201d said Bryant. \u201cI\u2019m grateful for this moment when YA is on the forefront of telling diverse stories. They\u2019re ahead of so many other areas of publishing and entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n The result is that Bryant is standing with some of her literary heroes. Her favorite author as a teenager was Sarah Dessen (“This Lullaby” <\/i>“Someone Like You” <\/i>“Keeping the Moon“)<\/i> who she now shares an editor with and who she was compared to by one of “Happily Ever Afters\u2019” blurbs. It\u2019s slowly sinking in to her that her daughters won\u2019t have to look for books that feature characters who look like them\u2014because their mom is going to be writing them.<\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter Lula tells everyone, \u2018My mom is an author,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI feel very proud to be contributing to the books that are going to be available for her when she\u2019s a teenager.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll set everything in Long Beach if they\u2019ll let me\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Bryant, who’s lived in Long Beach for 15 years, set her book in the city and features a number of local landmarks in prominent scenes. Though it’s based primarily in Bixby Knolls and Belmont Shore, it travels all over Long Beach, from Signal Hill\u2019s Hilltop Park to the Virginia Country Club to a number of well-known restaurants and pastry shops.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of my favorite desserts are in this book,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Bryant didn\u2019t just choose to set her book in Long Beach because she and her husband Joe are raising their family here, though. It\u2019s because her adopted hometown is the perfect backdrop for the kinds of diverse stories she wants to spend the rest of her life telling.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to high school in Orange County and I was one of a few Black people in my entire class,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat I love about Long Beach is the diversity\u2014I can reflect the diversity of the world and it\u2019s authentic to the city. I would never live anywhere else, and I\u2019ll set everything I write in Long Beach if they\u2019ll let me.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/09151057\/Bryant-2.png\")