Love works in mysterious and sometimes messy ways—just ask Christine Pride. A few years ago, Pride, 48, got another shot at romance when she reconnected with two of her ex-boyfriends, both of whom she had first dated more than 20 years earlier.
Pride dated the men again, back-to-back, in 2020 and 2021—and one of them, Ian, has been her partner ever since. “We have this mentality in our society that time is constantly running out—on your career, on your love life—and that’s such a nefarious message,” Pride says over Zoom from her apartment in East Harlem. Reconnecting with her exes in middle age gave her an idea for a novel about a love triangle. “Sometimes, to go forward, you have to go backward. So many people wonder ‘what if’ about a past love. I thought, this is actually too good not to write about.”
Pride’s heartfelt new novel, All the Men I’ve Loved Again, out in July from Atria, is the story of Cora Belle, a smart and shy woman from Virginia, who (like the author) dates the same two men twice and must choose between them. Part coming-of-age story, part modern romance, it’s Pride’s first solo project. She’s also the coauthor, with Jo Piazza, of We Are Not Like Them (2021), a Good Morning America Book Club pick, and You Were Always Mine (2023). Her previous novels explore race, friendship, and motherhood, and have been translated into three languages, according to Atria.
Pride is also a 20-plus-year publishing veteran—she’s held editorial positions at Doubleday and Simon & Schuster, among other presses—who became a novelist at 42. “As an editor, I really try to think about reaching the widest possible audience,” she says. “It’s still radical to see a story about a Black heroine that’s not centered on race, trauma, or tropes. I want All the Men I’ve Loved Again to be universal enough that it doesn’t matter what the characters look like. So it’s not the point of the story.”
All the Men I’ve Loved Again is about finding love, and how luck and timing, both bad and good, impact that search. “I’m primed to think of things in terms of fate and destiny,” Pride says. “I believe everything happens for a reason.” Moving between 1999 and 2021, the novel follows wide-eyed Cora as she starts college, makes lifelong friendships, and searches for love. First she falls for Lincoln, a pretty boy who wants to be a lawyer, then Aaron, a photographer who leaves for Paris on a fellowship soon after they meet, and whom she gets to know through the letters they exchange. Cora eventually loses touch with both men but reconnects with them in adulthood: they’re successful—and still into her. Now more self-assured and working at a nonprofit, Cora must decide which guy is her soulmate.
“One of the inspirations for this book, vibes-wise, was the movie Sliding Doors,” Pride says. “This idea that, at any given moment, any given decision could change the direction of your life.”
Laura Brown, Pride’s editor, calls the author an “incredible literary citizen”—one who mentors young Black women in publishing, has worked as a tutor at Dream Charter School in East Harlem, and always brings a personal touch to her fiction. “Christine does a great job of taking real emotions that she’s experienced and putting them on the page in a visceral and warm way. She’s gifted at making readers feel what her characters feel.”
Pride found it especially fun to write about Cora’s college years—a time when Destiny’s Child and TLC reigned, no one had cell phones, and handwritten notes trumped email. “Nothing will make you feel older than a book set in the ’90s, which I think of as my peak time,” Pride says, laughing. “I thought, I’m basically writing historical fiction.”
Born and raised in Silver Spring, Md., Pride describes herself as a “classic Gen-X good girl” who felt cocooned growing up. Her late father, John, who worked for the federal government, and mother, Sallie, a homemaker, were married for 60 years and instilled in her the importance of doing volunteer work. After receiving a BA in journalism in 1998 from the University of Missouri at Columbia, Pride moved to New York City in 2000 to work at the Family Center, a nonprofit that assists vulnerable families, and in 2003 began her career in publishing as an assistant at Doubleday—in grand style. “My first day was the day The Da Vinci Code went on sale,” she recalls. “We were having champagne toasts.”
In 2017, Pride was working as an editor at Simon & Schuster when, on a lark, she asked one of her writers, Piazza, who’d written a few bestsellers, if she’d like to collaborate on a novel. A literary partnership was born, and the pair are currently cowriting their third novel. “Christine is a great and loyal friend,” Piazza says. “I can’t do this with anyone else. We have the same work ethic, and we’re both dedicated to getting things done.”
For Pride, going solo with All the Men I’ve Loved Again was scary but rewarding. “Writing is exposing,” she says. “I had to learn to trust my instincts.” Taking risks is what it’s all about, she notes. If she hadn’t cowritten her first book, she wouldn’t have started an Instagram account to promote it, and wouldn’t have reconnected with Ian in 2021 on the platform. (Ian, incidentally, still had the letters Pride sent him in their 20s.) “I never would’ve written this novel, because the premise wouldn’t have existed. It’s an interesting domino effect.”
Pride dedicated her new novel to her father, who passed away last September. “I got the copyedit of this book delivered the day after my father died,” she says. “He was a huge supporter of my writing. He would call me at the end of every chapter he read. He’s how I discovered my love of reading.” She also credits her friends with sticking by her. “I spent most of my adulthood single and childless, so my besties have been my everything—my midnight phone calls, my dates to weddings.”
These days, Pride is right where she’s meant to be: writing fiction, uplifting her community through volunteerism (just like her parents taught her), and spreading positivity. “It’s important to stay inspired,” she says. “I hope my book reminds people that love does matter, and it’s not trivial to say that.”
Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.
