Essie Chambers Books In Order

Publication Order of Essie J. Chambers Standalone Novels

Essie Chambers
Essie Chambers is an award winning independent producer and author. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and has gotten fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and Baldwin for the Arts.

Previously Essie worked as a television executive, and she was a producer on “Descendant”, the Oscar-shortlisted documentary, which was released in 2022 by the Obamas’ Higher Ground production company and Netflix.

Writing books was the first thing that Essie ever wanted to do. Along with being a DJ, a singer, or something like that. She was always pointed in the direction of writing. She studied English as an undergrad and she was a journalist for a short time. She just got on this beautiful career path where she was helping others be creative, and it was just creative enough in order to prevent her from totally pursuing her own dream. However it’s not something that just came out of a later part of her life. It has always been the number one thing.

But she did wonder when she would do it. If she died, it’d be her biggest regret.

She wrote “Swift River” over the course of numerous years and Diamond had a lot of different iterations that she went through.

Essie knew the basic facts about her: that she’d be the single person of color in the town, that her family would be isolated, and they’d be mourning the loss of this dad, that he’d be sorta haunting the novel. She had to be wise, yet believably 16, and Essie wanted for Diamond to have a bit of emotional intelligence, yet not be too adult.

While she started developing the layers which came from the past, she began getting clearer. Essie believes when she came the most sharply into focus for her, was understanding that her voice needed to carry a bunch of painful stuff to it without weighing the novel down.

She writes with a couple of post-its on her computer. One says Make yourself laugh and the other says Tell the Truth. She feels like these two things are at the heart of Diamond’s voice. She sees this world through a sort of comedic lens and tells it like it is.

Essie grew up in Western Massachusetts. While Swift River is a fictional town, however she did grow up in a town that was once a mill town. It was far more suburban than Swift River. There were towns around her that she pulled from that were much more rural, making a more of a mashup of all of these places.

However she really understands small town texture, and it was a lot of fun to write since she lived that. However she did do a bunch of research on old mill towns, and how they functioned when the mills were sort of at the center of all of life. Then that sort of devastation to a community after this industry leaves, which is what was happening in Swift River.

And the characters are so haunted by loss in this story. She loved the idea of this town itself being haunted by loss too. These giant crumbling factory buildings everywhere you look. So she drew on her own personal experience yet did a bunch of research as well.

“Swift River” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2024. Summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is currently learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop vanished 7 years ago now, she and her mom hitchhike everywhere they go. However that is not the sole reason that she stands out: she gets relentlessly teased about her weight, and since her dad has been gone, she is the one and only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is bound and determined to have Pop legally declared dead in order for them to collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and move on finally.

However once Diamond gets this letter from a relative that she has never met before, key elements of Pop’s life become uncovered, and she’s introduced to generations of Black Newberry women, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much bigger picture of abandonment and prejudice, of devotion and love. While pieces of their shared past grow clearer, Diamond gains this sense of her place in her own family and in the world. However how will what she has learned about the past change her future?

A story about family secrets, first friendships, and discovering the bravery to let go, this is a sensational debut novel about how history shapes us and heralds the arrival of this major new literary talent.

“Swift River” was a Most Anticipated Book from TIME, Today, Real Simple, The Los Angeles Times, and BookPage. It was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick and a Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick.

This is a mesmerizing account of inherited trauma in what used to be a sundown town. Diamond is a gutsy girl with her keen intellect and a hopeful and irrepressible outlook, and her often humorous narration is the novel’s propelling and central force. Essie masterfully delivers the message of the book: our deepest intuitions and instincts are our ancestral memory; our own people that speak through us.

It’s a deeply moving portrayal of a girl that you will absolutely fall for and cheer on through every single scene of such a remarkable debut novel. It’s healing, darkly funny, heartbreaking, and fiery, with language that is so gorgeous that you go back and reread whole sentences just to soak them in better. One beautifully vibrant page after the next, this novel comes at you in whirring Kodachrome snapshots of classic rock, memory, and hidden New England lore.

This is a deeply intimate and corporeal story about the secrets that we keep and the secrets that get kept from us. Aching with drive and want right from the very first page, it’s a novel which delivers on all of its promise.