Less than three months after the release of her New York Times bestselling romance novel “This Could Be Us,” Kennedy Ryan confined herself to a hotel room with the hopes of completing its successor.
She’d been juggling a book tour and a Peacock adaptation for 2022′s novel “Before I Let Go” with a looming deadline for months. It was her husband who suggested a staycation to help her limit distractions.
Alone in a hotel room, she didn’t have to worry about the daily labors of marriage, motherhood or being a successful author. All she had to do was write.
For years, Ryan has been among the chorus of Black authors working to erode the unfounded notion that books featuring Black subjects and written with Black audiences in mind won’t sell.
In 2019, she became the first Black author to win a RITA Award when her 2018 book “Long Shot” won in the best contemporary romance: long category. When “This Could Be Us” landed on The New York Times bestsellers list earlier this year, Ryan acknowledged the honor on Instagram.
“I want to put this in context. It has been nearly 3 years since a Black romance author or a Black romance (book)were on the adult NYT list. The last one was my friend Tia Williams with Seven Days in June, June 2021,” she wrote on the social media platform.
“My Black and brown romance author friends and I have had to watch this list for that long not seeing ourselves here. This was a personal goal, but it feels like a win for all of us.”
Until she moved back to her native North Carolina roughly two years ago, Ryan says she spent most of her adult life in metro Atlanta, from Marietta and Roswell to Alpharetta and East Point. “Before I Let Go” and “This Could Be Us,” her most popular books to date, are set in the fictional Skyland, which is based on an amalgamation of prominent neighborhoods both inside and outside of the Atlanta perimeter, including Virginia-Highland, Inman Park, downtown Decatur and East Atlanta.
“This whole series is a little bit of a love letter to Atlanta,” she said from a hotel room, where she’s been working to finish the final book in the “Skyland” trilogy. “I think it’s the most Atlanta book of the whole entire series,” she added.
Credit: Kennedy Ryan
Credit: Kennedy Ryan
According to Ryan, the third novel will be released in the spring of 2025 and is the book most inspired by her local experiences.
“(Atlanta has) a resistance to falseness. There’s a resistance to pretending that you’re something that you’re not once you’re successful (or) forgetting where you’re from once you’re successful. I really love that aspiration and the authenticity sitting right beside each other.”
Ryan is no stranger to pulling from her real-life experiences to create the fictional world readers eventually read about in her books. “Before I Let Go,” a book about a divorced couple, touches on depression and therapy, and was partially inspired by the author’s own mental health journey.
“This Could Be Us” finds a dad learning to parent his twins following their autism diagnosis, which is something Ryan and her husband have experienced with their son.
“So much of that single dad, Josiah, who’s parenting those twin boys, is me watching my husband understand the level of patience and unconditional love it takes to be a father in that situation,” she said.
The former journalist also does researching and conducts interviews before writing. She did this for her “All the King’s Men” trilogy in 2019 and 2020, when she wrote about an Indigenous heroine fighting for land rights while running a political company.
“That’s not something I’ve ever done. But my convictions, my beliefs are woven into the fabric of that story,” she said. The author also hinted the final “Skyland” book will touch on affirmative action and recent reports about the rolling back of equity efforts across the country.
From Ryan’s perspective, placing romance side by side with heavier cultural topics helps to upend the notion that romance books lack substance. For this reason, she called her current work in progress her “Trojan Horse.”
“Romance is the safest space to have difficult conversations. The reason I say this is because there’s a guaranteed happily ever after. We can have these really tough conversations and then you know it’s gonna be OK, in the end.”
Ryan’s recent success paralleled the rise of BookTok, or TikTok content promoting books. BookTok, she said, has introduced fans to Black authors outside of mainstream publishing who are writing romance novels worth reading. Thanks to BookTok influencers, authors who might have otherwise enjoyed niche success have landed on bestseller lists.
Ryan sees it as an equalizer, especially for authors from marginalized groups who may have previously struggled to find success through the traditional, mainstream publishing industry.
The romance author said her first metric of success is always impact, and engaging with readers on TikTok and other social media platforms helps her directly see the ways her work has impacted her audience, especially those from the marginalized communities she’s often writing about.
Although she started out in traditional publishing, the author says she spent roughly seven years publishing books independently before inking a deal with Hachette imprint Grand Central Publishing. And if publishing three books in four years sounds like a lot, consider Ryan has released 22 novels in the decade since she published her first fictional book.
A native of North Carolina’s Granville County, Ryan didn’t see many Black romance novels in her local library as a kid. Now, she believes the genre and its Black women writers are having a revolution of accessibility and visibility.
“I wanted to see my books in Target. I wanted to see my books in airports. And I wanted other people to see Black women on covers, on billboards, on Good Morning America, on The Today Show,” she said.
“That’s where my work is now, which is very important to me because I’ve been very intentional about making sure Black women are very visible in my work.”
In her early days in Atlanta, Ryan said she was introduced to a number of these Black women, such as Piper Huguley, Vanessa Riley, Denny Bryce and others who were self-publishing.
“So often when people are talking to me, they’re talking to me like I am somehow exceptional,” Ryan said. “I had someone interviewing me not too long ago and they asked how I felt about being the only one and I’m like, I’m not. I am not the only one. Every time I’m in one of these conversations, I want to put these people’s names out,” she added.
“There’s just this vibrant era of Black storytelling that’s happening, specifically Black romance. I just want to be a megaphone for all of the other authors who are writing amazing work right now.”
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