How Author Christina Pride Found Inspiration in Her Own Love Life (Exclusive)

Publishing veteran Christina Pride has served as editor, co-author, and writes a regular column for Jo’s Cup called “Race Matters” and she is now opening a new chapter as a solo author with her debut novel, All the men I loved again.

The book, which will be released on July 8, 2025 by Atria Books, follows a woman who finds herself in a love triangle with two men in her early 20s, and then again—with the same two men—in her 40s.

The publisher calls him “A coming-of-age story full of tenderness for anyone who has wondered “what if” about a past love, who has wondered what it would be like to have a second chance, whose thoughts turn to the one who got away or never existed.

Below, in an exclusive essay for PEOPLE, Pride explains how this story came from his own real life.

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As a long-time editor, reader, and author of books, I’ve always loved stories that feel rooted in some aspect of the author’s deeply personal experience; give me a piece of autofiction or a vaguely veiled memoir any day. The essential emotional truths of these novels tend to hit harder and feel more real and raw as the lines between fiction and reality blur.

But when I became a writer, I never thought I would use my own life as inspiration. It would be too messy, too revealing. Then an intriguing turn in my love life changed my mind. It was too compelling, too strange, to do without.

In All the men I loved again A young woman, Cora Belle, finds herself in a love triangle with two men in their twenties, then, in a case of déjà vu, with the same two men on the eve of their 40th birthday. If this premise sounds too juicy and far-fetched to be true, think again.

When I was in college, I had a boyfriend who I dated for several years, which spilled over into this fragile eve of “real” adulthood. We found ourselves at this awkward crossroads of trying to decide whether or not to follow through, while also trying to figure out our own paths: law school for him, a career in media for me.

While we were apart for a while, figuring out what the future held, I met another man at a job interview, of all places. We had a lightning, mystical connection that I couldn’t ignore. But we were too young, too out of our depth, and unprepared for what that kind of serious relationship and commitment would mean. It was more practical to keep it as a fun fling. Safer.

Fast forward 20 years.

My ex-colleague and I reunited with our partner after his divorce and in the middle of the pandemic. While everyone else was baking sourdough bread, I was reliving my love life in reverse. Shortly after, as I approached the publication of my first novel (what a metaphor), I reconnected with my other memory from the past, which sent me spiraling: dating the exact same two men in a row, two decades after I did it the first time.

It was a plot twist straight out of a novel. Back when I was a book editor, I might have told a novelist that it was too unrealistic, too contrived to work. Who would have believed it? And that’s precisely what made it such an irresistible inspiration. Who among us hasn’t wondered, at one point or another, what it would have been like to start over? To reconnect with a past love? Or wondered, as I have: How do we decide who to love and when? Which is more powerful: fate, timing… or our hearts?

Here are some of the provocative questions I lent to my character Cora in All the men I loved again.

She and I have some things in common—we’re both nerdy black girls who grew up in a mostly white suburb of Washington, D.C.—but we’re also very different (just as Cora’s love interests are also different from their real-life counterparts). While Cora is cautious, I tend to pounce; while Cora is shy, I tend to force strangers on the subway to be my friends; while Cora is a pessimist by nature, I’m an irrepressible optimist in almost every area, including matters of the heart. But ultimately, Cora wants what we all want—to find a true connection with someone who knows and fully accepts all the past versions of you and who you might yet become.

It took me a long time to figure this out. After the whirlwind romances of my youth, I lived most of my adult life completely single—never married, no kids, never even lived with anyone—and then revisiting those romances in my forties changed everything. I finally met the person that my 24-year-old self, however reckless and naive, knew deep down was the right one for me. It’s an unlikely second-chance love story with a happily-ever-after straight from the pages of a novel. Or, in this case, the other way around.

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All the men I loved again by Christina Pride will be released on July 8, 2025 and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.