Asha Lemmie

Fifty Words for Rain started as high school writing in the Washington, D.C. area, and its opening chapters are that teenage draft almost untouched. The story follows Nori, born in the 1940s to a Japanese aristocrat and an African American serviceman, then hidden away by relatives who will not acknowledge her. Asha Lemmie finished the manuscript in New York after taking an English degree at Boston College in 2015, working in publishing at the time. Years of rejection ended when she signed with an agent in 2019; the book sold at auction two months later for more than $250,000. Good Morning America chose it for its book club in September 2020 and it reached the bestseller lists within weeks. Lemmie has said she wanted historical fiction pointed somewhere other than Europe. A second novel, The Wildest Sun, followed.