Erin Crosby Eckstine Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Erin Crosby Eckstine is a bestselling author of speculative literary fiction best known for her debut novel Junie, which she published in January 2025 under Ballantine Books. Eckstine is an author who writes just about anything as long as she is in the mood, and as such, she has written everything from personal essays to historical fiction. The author was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but spent her childhood in Los Angeles and the South before she attended Barnard College in New York City. She worked in a range of digital media jobs and internships before she got into education. She went to Stanford University, where she got a master’s degree specializing in English education. She would then move back to New York, and while she lived in Brooklyn, she used to teach high school English for at least half a dozen years before she got into full-time authorship. When hse is not pening her bestselling novels, she engages in a variety of hobbies that include playing The Sims, making pottery, cooking, and reading. She currently makes her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her partner and their cats.

As for the inspiration for her novel, Erin Crosby Eckstine drew much of it from the oral storytelling of her African American culture. Her grandmother was the family storyteller, and the fact that she grew up in a house full of cousins, uncles, and aunts who entertained each other with imagination and stories meant that stories would become something of a norm. As a child, Erin’s room was next to the kitchen, and hence, she used to eavesdrop on the adult talk next door and documented and uncovered many of the family secrets. For much of her life, she kept a library of the many narratives from her ancestors in her head, which she kept fresh through repetition. One of the se stories was the one of her great great great grandmother Jane Cotton, who established an African American community in Alabama after escaping slavery before the Civil War. When her grandmother retold it on a 2018 visit, something clicked into place for Eckstine. Working under a family quilt late into the night, she outlined and typed a multigenerational story similar to House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. While she penned her outline, she could not stop thinking of her grandmother, who would then become the inspiration for Junie, the titular character of her new novel.

Following that visit, Erin Crosby Eckstine spent a year studying long-form fiction writing and even attended a writing group and several classes. She never dreamed of sharing her new writing endeavors with anyone, but everything changed in March 2020. After spending a fortnight teaching from home, which would then turn into nearly two years of hardly leaving her studio apartment in New York City, she was surrounded by absence and loss. Eckstine hated he loss of thousands of people, the absence of friends and family, most of whom had left New York, and she was unsure if she would ever see them again. It was at this time that she turned to storytelling to find some purpose in an isolating and difficult time. She spent her free time refining her story and was done writing by the end of the year. The project served a greater purpose than he own as she tried to write a story to fulfill her grandmother’s wish of one day writing a family story in the style of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Erin Eckstine decided to take up her grandmother’s dream and write what she could never write due to many life responsibilities getting in the way.

However, just like any new writer, Erin Crosby Eckstine had several learning moments when it came to the publishing of her novel. She initially believed that it was all about the author but soon came to understand that it was a collaborative process. Working with Wendy Wong, her editor, and Danya Kukafka, her agent, she learned that to write a good book takes a team. The two provided all the guidance she needed, and she believes their insights were critical in how good the end product was. The biggest surprise in the writing was how she struggled to fully develop her lead character Junie. Even though she found it easy to develop the other character, she found herself revising Junie as a character to create the most objective persona she could. She has said that it was always important for her to make it easier for readers to share the lead’s feelings, and she successfully managed to do it.

Erin Crosby Eckstine published her debut novel Junie in 2025. The work is set on the eve of the Civil War where a Black teenager goes on a dangerous journey to get freedom. Junie is a 16-year-old whose home is a cotton plantation in Lowndes, Alabama. The year is 1860, and the teenager who is a slave works in the house with Bess, her bossy cousin, as they tend to the needs of the only daughter of the owners of the plantation, Violet McQueen.Junie loves to wander the local woods, mourning the death of Minnie, her older sister. When she was alive, she attempted to curb her carefree spirit, which resulted in much tension in the family, particularly among the older folk who feared it would come to the attention of the master. When the wealthy Taylors come to visit, Violet may just get a match, and Junie might just find herself having to relocate with her. To avoid the catastrophe Junie communes with the spirits and raises the ghost of her sister as she is propelled on a dangerous road toward freedom. Drawing on family history, Eckstine provides a fascinating look into the social, emotional, and psychological degradations of slavery. While Junie starts out as a naive teenager, she soon grows into a resilient and determined young woman as she comes to realize the impossibility of life as a slave and the true nature of her relationship with Violet McQueen.