Author Spotlight: Christine Pride & Jo Piazza

Jo Piazza and Christine Pride are an incredible writing duo and the co-authors of We Are Not Like Them and You Were Always Mine. We featured We Are Not Like Them in our November 2021 box, which was a huge success. 

Perhaps what makes them so successful as collaborators is the unique perspectives each one of them brings to their stories. We can’t wait to share more about the women behind the books, their collaboration process, and the remarkable novels they've created together.

Jo Piazza: Bestselling Author, Editor & Podcast Creator

Jo Piazza is a bestselling author, editor, podcast creator, and award-winning journalist. She is a national and international bestseller. Away from her collaboration with Christine, she is well known for The Sicilian Inheritance, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, The Knockoff, and How to Be Married. Her books have been published in ten languages across twelve countries, and four of them have been optioned for film and television.

Jo is also a fabulous podcaster, and her podcasts have been downloaded more than twenty-five million times. She is regularly on top of the podcast charts. As an editor, columnist, and travel writer, her work has appeared in publications like The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, and Glamour. Jo currently lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Nick Aster, and their three children.

Christine Pride: A Veteran Editor and Writer

Christine Pride is a writer, book editor, and content consultant who lives in Harlem, New York. For over 16 years, Christine Pride was one of the few Black editors in New York book publishing. Her work at Simon & Schuster, where she edited bestsellers by writers ranging from Joy Mangano to Glynnis MacNicol, solidified her reputation. 

She is also a freelance editorial consultant, and if that wasn’t enough, she teaches and coaches aspiring writers and pens the regular column Race Matters for Cup of Jo. 

Co-Authoring Success

It was during their collaboration on Jo Piazza’s novel Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win that their friendship began. Christina had an idea and asked Jo if she wanted to write a novel together about an interracial friendship strained by a police shooting.

Jo says she’d co-written novels before and wasn’t sure she would ever do it again. But Christine had this wonderful idea—a chance to put something meaningful into the world. So she said yes.

Their first novel together, We Are Not Like Them, was published in 2021 and follows the story of lifelong best friends Jen, a married white woman, and Riley, a Black TV journalist. Their friendship is tested when Jen’s husband, a white cop, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager, and Riley is assigned to cover the story.

They have both shared that writing this novel was not without its challenges and that their collaboration turned out to be more difficult than either of them expected. As they say, writing with someone else is incredibly intimate and requires intense communication. At the beginning of their collaboration, they didn’t have the language or shorthand they needed to write together. They almost gave up, but fortunately for us, they believed in the story they were telling and the way they intended to tell it.

A common misconception readers have is that they split the writing between the two main characters. But that’s simply not their process, and they believe that approach wouldn’t allow them to do justice to their stories or make the books feel cohesive as if written by one person.  

Their process starts with creating a detailed outline together so they have a roadmap of where the story will go, though, as with all journeys, they allow for detours and traffic jams. Then, one of them will start to write the first draft of a chapter and pass it to the other person when they’re done drafting, and the other person will take a pass at editing and back and forth until they’re happy with it. Then, they move on to the next chapter. 

They communicate mostly in comments within Google Docs, but periodically, they get on the phone to discuss questions and sticking points.

Success after success

We were fortunate enough to get to ask them about their writing process, and here are a few insights we gained after they released We Are Not Like Them!

We are so excited to bring We Are Not Like Them to life for our subscribers. What inspired you to write this novel?

We are so excited to be an OUABC pick! We were inspired to write this novel for a lot of reasons, but most of all, because we wanted to show the humanity and real emotions behind the headlines of unarmed Black people in America. Our way in was to imagine an interracial friendship, much like our own, and what would happen if two friends were intimately affected by a shooting. 

In this case, Riley and Jen, are both so personally involved in the tragedy—it hits so close to home for them that they have no choice but to reckon with the implications. We also saw an opportunity to bring our particular lived experiences and perspectives to the table, writing together as a Black woman and white woman, a wholly unique approach and a way to tell a story that would be richer than if either of us tackled it solo.

What was your favourite part of writing this novel with a fellow author?

So many things. Writing is such a lonely process, and having a partner and ally made it a much richer and rewarding experience. We also truly believe neither of us could have written this book alone. This book needed both perspectives to feel fair, balanced, and eye-opening. It wasn’t always easy for us to write, but every discussion and argument we had while writing made the story that much better.

What do you hope readers take away from reading We Are Not Like Them?

We joke that readers will come for the friendship and stay for the social justice in this book. But the truth is that we hope this book will help readers start hard conversations about race and social justice. We also hope that we’ve taken a timely, topical, and sometimes difficult subject and packaged it in a relatable, compelling, and heartfelt story. Ultimately, more than anything, we want readers to be touched and moved.

Following the success of their debut, they co-authored You Were Always Mine. This novel explores the theme of motherhood through the lives of Cinnamon Haynes, a Black career counselor in Georgia, and Daisy Dunlap, a young white woman who leaves her newborn baby in Cinnamon’s care. The story delves into the complexities of motherhood, race, and societal expectations, offering a nuanced exploration of these themes.

Looking ahead, they have another joint novel, I Never Knew You At All, set for release in 2025. Christine is also working on a rom-com titled To All the Men I’ve Loved Again, which is set for release in 2025.

Conclusion

Their unique partnership has produced novels that not only entertain but also spark important conversations about race, motherhood, and social justice. We can’t wait for the release next year, and who knows, it may just be featured in one of our fabulous book boxes.