Kristina Forest

A quick way to sum that up is while I was working at SNS, I graduated from grad school and my graduate degree, as you can imagine, was not cheap in New York City.

And I was like, I need to make all the loans that I took out to get this degree worth it.

And so I became very determined to get an agent and to get a book deal.

And so what I was working on was

My first novel, which was titled I Want to Be Where You Are, this was a YA rom-com about a ballerina who goes on a road trip with the boy next door to a dance audition.

And at the time, I really was inspired, again, by Sarah Dustin, but also authors like Jenny Han, Stephanie Perkins.

I thought that I would spend my career writing YA.

And I wrote three YA novels and I loved the experience.

I think that there's something very fulfilling about writing for youth.

And I loved meeting librarians and younger readers at festivals because they loved the books and they wanted to see more books like that, particularly young Black readers who were looking for books like that.

Because when I was in high school, there weren't a lot of...

contemporary YA romances featuring young Black girls.

And so I really took a lot of pride in being able to write those stories for young girls who were like me, how I was when I was in high school, who were looking for those books.

And then I turned 30.

I was turning 30.

And I just sort of felt like I had said all I wanted to say in the teen space.

And also because I was working in children's books publishing, a lot of what I read was children's literature, of course.

And so I'm reading picture books and chapter books in middle grade and YA all day.

And I started reading adult fiction for pleasure because it was a way to separate what I was doing for work from my personal life.

And a friend of mine worked at St.