From Black Creatives Fund to Debut Novel: Ballantine Books Releases Lattimore’s ALL WE WERE PROMISED

WEBWIRE – Wednesday, April 3, 2024

In 2021,Ashton Lattimore, an award-winning journalist and former lawyer, became a participant in the Black Creatives Fund Revisions Workshop. Ballantine Booksis excited to release Lattimores first novel,ALL WE WERE PROMISED.ALL WE WERE PROMISED tells the story of a housemaid with a dangerous family secret as she conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia.The narrative is told through the perspectives of three women in vastly different circumstances the rebel, the socialite, and the fugitive risking everything for one another in an American city straining to live up to its loftiest ideals.Publishers Weekly says, [Lattimore] provides a textured view of such historical events as the building of Pennsylvania Hall as a meeting place for the antislavery movement and its subsequent burning by an angry antiabolitionist mob. Lattimore is a writer to watch.

What is the Black Creatives Fund?

Together withWe Need Diverse Books(WNDB), Penguin Random House was thrilled to announce the launch of theBlackCreativesFund, an initiative with a mission of supporting emerging and establishedBlackwriters and illustrators. PRH was the inaugural sponsor of thefundfor the 2021 year and continues to sponsor the program today. For more information on theBlackCreativesFundclickhere.

Penguin Random House and We Need Diverse Books continue to work on more initiatives to promote the Black Creatives Fund, and of course, Lattimores debut novel! Keep an eye out for an upcoming giveaway and an intimate Q&A.

About Ashton Lattimore
Lattimore is an award-winning journalist and a former lawyer. She is the editor-in-chief at Prism, a nonprofit news outlet by and for communities of color, and her nonfiction writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, Slate, CNN, and Essence. Lattimore is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Columbia Journalism School. She grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband and their two sons. All We Were Promised is her first novel.