Elise Bryant

Happily Ever Afters, published in 2021, gave Tessa Johnson a familiar problem: a Black teenager who loves romance novels and never finds herself inside one, so she writes her own, then seizes up when she reaches a competitive arts high school. It brought Bryant a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. One True Loves followed in January 2022, putting Lenore Bennett, a graduating artist with no plan, on a Mediterranean cruise beside a classmate who has mapped out a decade. Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling, from 2023, runs a romance across a full calendar of holidays in two alternating voices, and It's Elementary moved her into adult fiction with a reluctant school-committee parent who thinks she has witnessed something. Bryant taught special education for years before writing full time, and lives in Long Beach, California.