Alex Travis Author Talk: The Only Black Girl in the Room

Genevieve Francis, a 25-year-old Black reporter, assumed she’d go into her fourth year at her newspaper job with a bigger story than the latest seasonal ice cream flavor. Instead, she’s relegated to doing copy edits and sensitivity reads on the articles her white colleagues write. So when Gen finally gets the opportunity to cover a prominent CEO’s gala, she leaps at the chance—this will be her biggest assignment to date. The only The CEO is her ex, Jude, whose marriage proposal she publicly rejected four years prior.

Following their awkward run-in, Jude personally requests Gen to write the first ever authorized profile of him. The potential for scandal, if anyone digs into their past, is high, but Gen decides to risk it—if she proves herself with this profile, it could jumpstart her dream of writing articles centered on Black voices. But between the racist backlash from her colleagues and her conflicting feelings toward her ex, Gen soon realizes she’s in way over her head. And it may be more than just her career on the line.

Timely and thoughtful, this energetic debut explores what it means to believe in your future when everyone and everything is working against you.

Alex Travis is a school psychologist by day, author by night. Alex earned a Ph.D., and procrastinated her dissertation by writing her forthcoming books. Alex wrote her first book at the age of 11, and has been losing herself in fictional worlds of her own creation since then. Alex makes her home in Virginia with her husband, an outrageous collection of Funkos, and too many books to count.