Entertainment
On The Rise- Carissa Bryant
Born in Memphis, TN, but raised in Philadelphia, PA, Carissa Bryant has been using her love for writing to help encourage positive upbringings in children’s lives.
Writing is one of the most important fundamental skills that people learn at a young age how to do. From a young age Carissa Bryant found her love to write as a hobby. She always wrote in journals as a child and wanted to expand her writing.
She tried writing romance stories, action stories, and mystery stories. Bryant could not find her passion to keep writing those stories. After experimenting she found her love for writing children books.
“What lead me to writing children books was my husband and I starting a mental health practice. We started with children and after one accident when a child’s twin brother ran away from home. It hurt my heart to hear that the little girl was not close to her twin brother and did not know much about who he hung around.”
Bryant’s experience with the twin issue drove her to writing children books that were family oriented. The name of the children’s book series she has created is “Ketchup with the Jessup’s”. It follows various experiences a brother and sister go through to encourage siblings to have strong bonds.
“We need to get some stories out to children while they are young. They need to learn the importance of sticking together. In like 30 minutes I wrote two short stories basically talking about some of the experiences me and my brother had growing up.”
When Bryant first created the books, they were just on the shelves of her private practice and read to the children there. One day she was speaking to a teacher at her son’s school and the teacher invited her to come and read the book to the students.
“I came out and did the book reading and received a lot of support. They enjoyed the story. It is based off of my brother and me so the main characters are minority characters that we do not see too much. “
After speaking to her son’s school, Bryant was continuously getting invited to read her stories at other schools. With much support, she decided to self publish the “Ketchup with the Jessup’s” series for everyone to purchase on her site, Amazon, and Barnes and Nobles.
After completing the children’s book series Bryant has goals to create women inspirational books.
“I want to write on “the balance”: family, friends, motherhood, and then the career woman. It is valuable to learn how to mange doing it all and still be happy.”
Carissa Bryant’s “Ketchup with the Jessup’s” series have two stories out now for sale. There will be two more that will be released in 2017.
Along with creating new stories, Bryant plans on opening a non-profit in Atlanta that will focus on helping low income families get the resources they need to increase their reading literacy.
Website: www.ketchupwiththejessups.com
