In Conversation: On Island Queen: A Novel & Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel

Jayne Allen is the pen name of Jaunique Sealey, a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School. Drawing from her experiences as an attorney and entrepreneur, she writes stories that touch upon contemporary women’s issues such as workplace and career dynamics, race, fertility, modern relationships, and mental health awareness. She calls her first novel, Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel (Harper Perennial) “the epitaph of my 30s.” The protagonist, Tabitha Walker, is a Black woman with a plan to “have it all.” At 33 years old, the checklist for the life of her dreams – education, career, a good relationship - is well underway. But an unexpected diagnosis puts in doubt something she took for granted: having children. Suddenly, the fight to save the future she dreamed of becomes all-consuming, demanding a steep price that forces an honest reckoning for nearly everyone in her life. Her grandmother’s adage just might still be true: Black girls must die exhausted. Kirkus praised Allen’s writing as “a sharp, lively voice that is full of warmth and humor. ... Tabitha and her friends are well-drawn, and it is the dynamic between the protagonist and the women in her life that propels the story. … a novel that is both timely and enjoyable.”

Nadine Séïde Gonzalez is an author and attorney. Her recent contemporary romance books are What Happens in Miami (Harlequin Desire and Mills and Boon) and Scandal in the VIP Suite. Kirkus has described her work as “a sleek and entertaining contemporary romance that offers vibrant settings, appealing characters, and a sexy and nuanced love story.”

Vanessa Riley is an author of historical fiction and romance. Her books include A Duke, The Lady, and A Baby and her latest work, Island Queen: A Novel (William Morrow), based on the incredible true-life story of Dorothy “Doll” Kirwan Thomas, one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies. Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll buys her freedom – and that of her sister and her mother – from her Irish planter father. Working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life – a restless shipping merchant, a wealthy planter hiding a secret, and a naval captain who will later become King William IV of England – she builds a legacy of wealth and power. Island Queen is a sweeping epic of a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid 18th-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. The New York Times called it “riveting and transformative,” and noted that the book provides an incisive interior view of some of the thorniest aspects of West Indian colonial culture: the roots of color and class privilege, the implications of concubinage and common-law marriages, and the participation of some free people of African ancestry in slavery.