trap for Black women, but writing books for young readers is a way of healing myself and serving my community at the same time.
AV: You have a doctorate and worked in academia. What made you decide to leave the academy and pursue writing and publishing full-time?
ZE: I never intended to become an academic. I graduated college and felt frustrated that so little of my formal education focused on Black history and culture. I never had a Black educator until the last semester of my last year in college, and he introduced me to Jamaica Kincaid. Then I spent the summer in Brooklyn with my father and decided to do my BA over again, this time focusing on Black literature. A professor in Toronto suggested I go to graduate school instead, and so I returned to the US and earned a PhD in American Studies at NYU. I had Black professors and my cohort was majority Black— it was a completely different learning experience. But I was still working with kids the whole time and I struggled to make my scholarship relevant to them. So I took a year off, wrote my first adult novel(“ One Eye Open”), and then finished the degree and used contingent academic positions to fund my writing life. But the academy has changed since I earned my degree in 2003; there are very few visiting positions and plenty of adjunct positions. I took a tenure-track job at a community college but knew I couldn’ t stay past three years when the teaching load would jump to 4 / 5. I saved $ 30K and quit my job so I could focus on my writing full-time. It was a little scary but I have no regrets; I still give talks on campus, I can prioritize my writing projects, and I still publish essays on the racial disparities in children’ s publishing. My scholarly training gives me a certain credibility and that opens doors that might otherwise remain closed to an indie author.
AV: What led to your decision to self-publish?
ZE: I naively thought it would be easy for me to get an agent and a publishing deal. When I sent my first novel out, I got such an enthusiastic response that I thought I’ d have multiple offers and a six-figure deal in no time. Then, after six months, there was silence. So I started writing for kids and sent those stories out instead, and again got a really positive response:“ You write beautifully but there’ s no market for this.” I did a little research into the industry and found the statistics compiled annually by the CCBC; their data proved that institutional racism was preventing many Indigenous writers and writers of color from getting their books into kids hands. I won a few prizes for my first picture book,“ Bird,” but still couldn’ t get an agent or editor to sign me. So I started to self-publish some of the 30 manuscripts I had sitting on
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