For our very first installment of Five Questions, I'm delighted to welcome author Nikki Davenport. We met at the Leesburg Literary Festival in June and hit it off right away over our shared love of romance tropes, travel, and writing.
Nikki's novels explore family, relationships, resilience, and the moments that shape us—making her the perfect first guest for a series centered around books and everyday life. In this week's Five Questions, Nikki shares the stories that stay with her, favorite rituals, and what's next on her writing desk.
Pour a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and enjoy!
1. What book has stayed with you the longest?
The books that came to mind surprised me—not only because none of them are romances, but because I read every one of them in the same sixth-grade English class.
- Half Magic by Edward Eager
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- The Girl Who Owned a City by O. T. Nelson
- The Silver Crown by Robert C. O'Brien
These were the stories that made me wonder, imagine, and look at the world a little differently. They've stayed with me ever since, as has the teacher who read them aloud to us. In fact, I'm still in touch with her today, and she was the first person who encouraged me to write.
2. What observation or experience first sparked the story you felt compelled to write?
There wasn't a single spark so much as a slow accumulation of moments that all seemed to be asking the same question: Why wasn't someone who looked like me ever at the center of the story?
I loved seeing Black characters who were wise, funny, loyal, and unforgettable, but they were almost always the best friend, the mentor, the teammate, or the sidekick. Blockbusters like The Hunger Games and Divergent gave us incredible supporting characters. Even many of the romance authors I admired created Black characters I adored, but I never found them at the center of their own happily-ever-after.
Then came Black Panther. It wasn't simply that the cast was Black. It was that the entire world had been imagined with that assumption from the very beginning. It made me wonder: What if I did that with a contemporary romance?
Cancer sharpened that question. Surviving it left me with much less interest in asking what the market expected and much more interest in asking what fourteen-year-old Nikki would have been thrilled to discover on a bookstore shelf. I wanted to write a world where Black people weren't exceptional because they had overcome suffering. They simply got to be brilliant, complicated, funny, flawed, powerful, deeply loved—and unquestionably at the center of the story.
That was the beginning of Crown & Heart.
"Sometimes the kindest thing I can do—for everyone, including myself—is to trust the people I love to handle ordinary life without rearranging my own."
3. What ordinary moment has inspired you lately?
My husband was taking our younger child to an appointment while I headed to dragon boat practice. Rain was in the forecast, and before anyone had even mentioned it, I'd already rewritten the evening in my head.
I'll drive them there early and just be late. Then they don't have to deal with the inconvenience.
Then I stopped.
No one had asked me to solve the problem. In fact, no one had even decided there was a problem yet.
It made me wonder why my plans were always the first ones I was willing to sacrifice. Sometimes the kindest thing I can do—for everyone, including myself—is to trust the people I love to handle ordinary life without rearranging my own.
4. What is your favorite daily ritual?
Pretending to be asleep while my cat tries to gaslight me into feeding her early.
My literary-named feline overlords, Maya and Mosley, must have furry little wristwatches because, without fail, they begin their campaign just before 6:00 every morning. Maya, who is, shall we say, stout, plops onto my chest like Thor's hammer and paws at my face and neck. If I pull the covers over my head, she'll simply reach underneath them.
She's wonderfully persistent, and it makes me laugh every time because we both know exactly how it's going to end. Eventually, I "wake up" and spend a few minutes petting her while she purrs triumphantly. Mosley usually joins us for the snuggling, too.
5. What are you looking forward to?
Right now, I'm looking forward to my first large romance-focused author event, the Sexy and Sassy Signing in Richmond.
I've loved every event I've attended so far, but this one feels a little different. I've always written for romance readers first, so I'm excited to spend a day surrounded by people who happily talk about tropes, fictional crushes, happily-ever-afters, and all the wonderfully bookish things that make this community so much fun.
Mostly, I'm looking forward to the conversations.
On Nikki's Nightstand
I'm usually reading more than one book at a time, each for a different reason.
For book club, I'm reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
I'm also reading Fracture by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole with my teenager. He mostly tolerates my presence these days, but we've made it through more than thirty books in the series together, and I treasure the conversations that follow each one.
Finally, I'm rereading International Incident, my own debut novel, to annotate it for a special edition Kickstarter this fall. Revisiting the story with a few more years of growth as a writer has been a fascinating experience.
Read Along with Nikki
Inspired by Nikki's answers? We've gathered the books mentioned here—including the novels she has written, the childhood books that stayed with her, and the books currently on her nightstand—in one convenient Bookshop.org list.
(Purchases made through Bookshop.org support independent bookstores, and Poplar & Prose may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.)
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About Nikki
Nikki Davenport writes steamy contemporary romance and romantic suspense where love isn't the only thing at risk. Her Crown & Heart series transports readers to a lush, all-Black royal universe with Wakanda-meets-Bridgerton energy, celebrating Black joy, family, legacy, and hard-won happily-ever-afters. By day she works in education; by night she's usually writing, paddling with a dragon boat team of fellow breast cancer survivors, or being outwitted by her two literary-named cats.
Five Questions is a recurring interview series from the Poplar & Prose Journal featuring authors and members of our little corner of the literary and local community.
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