Young Adult novelist Michelle Coles talks about how writing her book, Black Was the Ink, came from the collision of her work as a civil rights attorney for the United States Department of Justice, her being pregnant with her second child, and the 2015 Mother Emanuel Massacre, the most violent hate crime against African Americans that she recalled witnessing in her lifetime.

For more with Michelle, visit her AdLit.org author page.

This author interview was produced through a partnership of the Grateful American Foundation and WETA.