By May 2008, she felt that the book was ready. Acting on the advice of poet and publisher Kwame Alexander—whom Carter met at a musical retreat—the aspiring author and her father traveled to Los Angeles to attend BookExpo America, the largest annual book trade fair in the United States.

Carter spent two days at the convention center talking to publishers about her book.

“Nobody gets picked up off the floor, but we didn’t know that at the time,” she says. “At the end of the second day, we were really discouraged and ready to go home.”

But Carter decided to try one more publisher.

Without looking at the name of the company, she strode up to the booth.

The person behind the booth, who turned out to be a vice president at Simon & Schuster, “just engulfed Noni with energy” and asked her to return the next day, according to Carter’s father.

“He just stopped in the middle of the discussion and said, ‘Let’s cut to the chase, we want to sign Noni,’” he recalls. “I was trying to be a businessman about this whole situation. Internally, I was exploding, jumping for joy.”

Over the next year and a half, Carter worked with Simon & Schuster to further hone her manuscript and started her freshman year at Harvard in the meantime.

On Jan. 5, her book was released.

“Twelve years old to 18—that’s a key point in your life; you grow so much,” she muses. “There’s definitely my own growth story somewhere in there.”

EARNEST ABOUT EDUCATION

Since the release of her book, Carter has visited schools, bookstores, libraries, and churches to read excerpts from “Good Fortune” and speak to young people about her writing journey.

“That’s where my passion lies, book published or not,” she says of the opportunity to talk to students.

“My whole goal is to inspire young people in my generation to be the best they can be, to go for their goals and dreams like the main character in my book.”

This past Monday, while speaking to fourth, fifth, and sixth graders at Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School in Cambridge, Carter relates the importance of “the three E’s: emancipation, education, and earnestness.”