Noué Kirwan is the author of the romance novel Long Past Summer, which is about a New York lawyer who finds herself defending her ex-boyfriend against his ex-wife, who used to be her best friend. Kirwan spoke with rolling out about the novel, and what inspired her to write this twisted love triangle for her debut book.
What inspired you to create this book?
I have been an aspiring writer that never felt like I could do it, but everyone told me that my stories were great and I should put them out there. Pre-pandemic I had a story that I was in this fan fiction community, and there was a couple in it. I decided to create this story around that couple. After I wrote it, I shared it with some people and they told me that it was really good. People asked me if I thought about publishing the book, and that’s when I decided to do it.
What is the story behind the book cover?
It was a collaboration between myself and my publisher. I told them that it was important to me that there be a Black woman on the cover so that Black people would know when they came to it, that’s what they were getting. The name of the book itself doesn’t tell you much about the story, and it was important to me that the story itself be very universal. Looking at the back of the book, you’re not going to necessarily know what you’re getting, but I definitely wanted a Black woman on the cover. Speaking with the art department, they were very interested in wanting to depict the summer part of the cover. It’s coming out in the summer … so there’s a sun in the background with lush greenery.
What message do you want to send to Black men and women reading this book?
I wanted to say that the love that you deserve, it’s okay to wait for it. It’s okay that it may not come to you immediately, and I think that was one of the main things. That’s why I described this story about a Black woman that’s falling in love with herself because sometimes the love is also learning to love yourself and coming to grips with the fact that it might take a while for everything to fall into place, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
