It’s a hot and sunny morning in the heart of literary Brooklyn, and 31-year-old Jumi Bello is sitting outside the Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie shop in Gowanus trying to grapple with the meteoric rise, and even faster fall, of her writing career.
Bello’s debut novel, The Leaving, was supposed to be published by Riverhead Books this month. “Not only did I get a top agent, but I got a top publisher and the top editor,” she marvels, referring to Calvert Morgan, one of Riverhead’s executive editors. “When I look at the writers Cal has chosen to champion, they have been writers who come from marginalized backgrounds, and he elevates their work to art.”
