Stacey Abrams: How the Georgia politician built a career as romance novels author Selena Montgomery

As a politician in Georgia, Stacey Abrams has left her mark in many ways: as a member of the state’s House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, as the Democratic party's candidate in the 2018 gubernatorial election, and as an impactful activist against voter suppression, now credited with helping to register an estimated 800,000 voters in the state.

Parallel to her work in politics, Abrams has built a second career as an award-winning author of romance novels and thrillers. Her first novel, Rules of Engagement, was published in 2009 under the nom de plume Selena Montgomery. Seven more have followed, also under Montgomery’s name. The most recent, Deception, came out in 2009. 

Abrams has also published under her real name. Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change (previously titled Minority Leader) was released in 2018, and followed in June this year by Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America. 

Next year, Abrams will for the first time release fiction under her real name. While Justice Sleeps, a thriller set in the US Supreme Court, is set for publication on 25 May 2021.

Abrams began writing fiction – the first novel that would ultimately be published as Montgomery – during her third year at Yale Law School. "Once you realize you don’t want to be a Supreme Court justice, a professor at Yale or managing partner at Wachtell, your options open up a bit in terms of time,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2013.

Romance, she said at the time, was a way to publish stories that the industry otherwise failed to manifest interest for, if they came from female authors.

“I found if I made my spy fall in love, I could publish it as romance,” she said. “They got to kill all the same people they were going to kill, but they fell in love at the end of the story.”

Abrams’s two careers – as an author and as a politician – have found ways to intersect. Ahead of the Georgia runoff that will likely determine if the GOP retains control of the Senate, a group of romance authors and readers inspired by Abrams have created Romancing the Runoff, a project designed to support voting organisations in the state.

Asked in 2018 if her writing life prepared her to run for office, Abrams highlighted her desire to reflect “the complexity of women’s lives” in her fiction, which has tied into her work as a politician.

“Whether I’m writing about an ethno-botanist or a woman who’s raising orphans in South Georgia the challenge of telling their stories is the same challenge I face as a legislator who has to talk to someone about passing a bill on kinship care, helping grandparents raising grandchildren, or blocking a tax bill because I’m using expertise they don’t realise I have,” she told Entertainment Weekly.

“I revel in having been able to be a part of a genre that is read by millions and millions of women, in part because it respects who they are. It respects the diversity of our experiences, and it creates space for broader conversations.”