When someone we love passes away, they might leave us physically, but we still have stories about them. But does telling those stories keep them alive? Emerson alumni Amber McBride ‘13 seeks to answer this question in her new book, “The Leaving Room.” In the young adult literature novel, which came out Oct. 14, readers follow Gospel, the keeper of a place between life and death called the leaving room. 

In “The Leaving Room,” the story is set in a spiritual world, a place with no doors and a ceiling of stars, where all young people on their journey toward death must first go through. There, they meet Gospel, whose sole purpose is to guide every child who arrives.  

“If you are religious, some people believe in heaven, some people believe in whatever,” McBride said in an interview with The Beacon. “ [The Leaving Room] is this idea of even before you get to whatever comes next…what happens?” 

Inspired by her father’s near-death experience when she was in college, the book is one she said she’d been wanting to write for a while, as she wanted to explore the in-between space of life and death, and what it looks like. 

Gospel talks to many of these children about what it means to pass away, keeping one memory from every child. 

“[The book] is kind of talking about this idea of death. Why don’t we talk about death that much? Why don’t we talk about death with young people?” McBride said.

But, there’s a twist—while we follow Gospel’s life, there is a sudden appearance of another keeper of the leaving room, Melodiee, who changes Gospel’s path. Her soul becomes intertwined with Gospel’s, and they form an intimate queer connection that becomes clearer as the book progresses. 

“People are saying that this is my first queer book, but I think that all of my books are queer, because I’m queer, and my characters are queer,” said McBride. 

While this book is the first in which the main character is in a queer relationship, McBride said it doesn’t mean that her past characters did not hold these identities.

In this novel, McBride planned to portray the romantic relationship of two female characters. 

“It came so naturally, and the reviews that I’ve gotten that are like, ‘You can feel their chemistry on the page.’ It just makes me really really happy,” McBride said. 

One of McBride’s main goals is to include more diversity in books, which is why her queer identity plays a big part in her stories. 

“We need more diverse writers, we need more perspectives,” McBride said. 

McBride expressed how much diversity impacts the publishing and literary world. In a divisive world, she believes stories must include everybody. 

As a Black queer woman, she writes her truth—a perspective she hopes resonates with some readers, though she believes all stories by diverse authors can still resonate with the full span of human experience. 

In her work, McBride draws from her life. Coming from a military family and growing up in mostly white suburbs, she experienced racism differently. 

“It was [a] more discreet kind of racism,” McBride said. “You’ll find that a lot in my books…It’s an undertone of it, but not the focus.”

She describes herself as an honest writer and thinks that, in all genres, “there needs to be books that just show Black characters living their lives.” 

McBride pointed to the fact that there have been more books with animals as main characters published in the last few years than with Black people in them. McBride talked about what it means to be a Black author in a publishing world lacking in diversity. She expressed that it can be difficult to prove that one’s story can resonate with any reader, regardless of their background. 

“For some reason, everyone thinks that everyone should understand Shakespeare, no matter where they are from, but, like, people are like, ‘Oh, Toni Morrison, [a Black American novelist and editor], might be difficult to understand,’” McBride said. “Just because a Black author wrote [a book] doesn’t mean it is not important to everyone else as well, and I think that’s something in academia we need to keep pushing against.” 

McBride herself was a professor at the University of Virginia and James Madison University until she stopped teaching and started writing full time almost two years ago. However, while teaching, she always included more diverse readings in her classes, a practice she believes every teacher and professor should adopt. She also shared books widely considered literature “classics” by people with diverse backgrounds.  

As a writer, she tries to keep authentic to herself in all she writes by not falling down the rabbit hole of writing what people want, so as not to lose her voice and her identity. As an Emerson alum, McBride advises students to find their authentic voice.

“Finding…who you are is going to mean everything in your career. Don’t try to copy other people, just really work on ‘What sounds uniquely me?’ and go with that.”

“The Leaving Room” came out mid October, and is already part of the 2025 National Book Awards Finalists For Young People’s Literature. This is her second book with this award, as her young adult debut novel “Me: Moth” was a 2021 finalist and earned multiple awards, such as the Time magazine Best Children’s Book of the Year and the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award for New Talent. 

“You write the best thing you can, and you don’t expect much. Not in the way of awards, at least,” she said. “You hope your readers like your book, so every time, it’s just exciting, and really a moment when you are like, ‘Is this real life?’”