Christine spent her early career in non-profit management before embarking on her publishing journey, rising through the editorial ranks at various esteemed “Big Five” imprints, including Doubleday, Broadway, Crown, Hyperion and, most recently, as a Senior Editor at Simon and Schuster. She is known as a passionate and hands-on editor and literary champion who’s published many New York Times bestsellers and critically acclaimed books, such as From Scratch, Three Girls From Bronzeville, Heaven is Here, No One Told Me This, Surviving the White Gaze and These Ghosts Are Family. Christine’s guiding force is the desire to nourish exciting and underrepresented voices, distinct perspectives and stories that start conversations, offer inspiration and have lasting emotional resonance.

This drive held true as she turned her attention to writing her own debut novel, We Are Not Like Them, published by Atria Books in 2021 and selected as Good Morning America’s October Book Club Pick. She partnered with bestselling author, Jo Piazza, to tell this story of an interracial friendship upended by a police shooting that hits close to home for two women. As a Black woman and a woman, Christine and Jo chose to write this novel together in order to draw from their unique perspectives and experiences. In the writing process, they had to confront their own fears, biases and misunderstandings about race, which then informed the story and ensured it was authentic and relatable to thousands of readers. People magazine called We Are Not Like Them a “powerful and timely tale.” The Washington Post described it as an “emotional literary roller coaster.” And Real Simple deemed it a “book club winner.”

Book clubs did embrace the story in a very big way. Christine and Jo have participated in hundreds of them, as well as community reads and D&I events, facilitating illuminating conversations about the thorny issues of race they explore in the book, as well as the writing process and world of publishing.

Their most recent novel, You Were Always Mine (Atria, June 2023), also explores race through the lens of an intimate relationship—a mother/daughter story. It’s a moving and provocative novel about a Black woman who finds an abandoned White baby, sending her on a collision course with her past, her family and a birth mother who doesn’t want to be found.

Once again, the pair bring their “empathetic, riveting, and authentic” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author) storytelling to an unforgettable novel that revolves around provocative and timely questions about race, class and motherhood.

These conversations about how we challenge our biases, how we think about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them, and how we can find common ground in a polarized world—are more vital than ever. It’s what inspired Christine to start penning her column, Race Matters, on the popular lifestyle site, Cup of Jo. There she’s built a community of readers who are curious to explore issues of oppression, privilege, identity and allyship.

These are all themes brought to bear in her speaking, which she approaches with warmth, humility and humor. Christine believes in helping audiences think critically about the intersection of ethnicity, experience and perspective and how it affects our communities and relationships; how we can lean into hard discussions about potentially divisive issues with the goal of moving toward fostering understanding and a sense of collective humanity; and how to hone craft and harness the power of story-telling to connect with our deepest humanity. Read Less ^