Naima Coster '15 to Publish Third Novel, 'Take What You Can'

Writing alum Naima Coster '15 has just announced the forthcoming release of her third novel, Take What You Can, with Pamela Dorman Books, an imprint of Viking (Penguin).

The novel follows Val and Milly, the only two Black students on a study abroad trip in France, during which they become instant best friends. Nearly a decade later the two friends each have a baby girl on the way. After Val moves to New York to raise her daughter near Milly, strained marriages, gaps in socioeconomic class, and the demands of motherhood reveal the cracks in their decade-long friendship and force them to confront how they've grown apart. The novel investigates motherhood, sisterhood, and friendship over the course of one’s life, oscillating between Brooklyn, New York, and southern France.

"I started Take What You Can because I wanted to write about how class differences come into greater relief when two best friends become mothers," Coster said. "When I moved back to New York City with a newborn, I found myself obsessively thinking about money and privilege—what I had and what I didn’t, and what I wanted. The book is ultimately about class, but it grew to hold so many more aspects of my experience of early motherhood—grief at being a motherless mother, a frantic desire to hold onto my old life and independence and pleasure, a difficult reevaluation of my core relationships, and a reimagining of myself and who I wanted to be in this new stage of life. I poured all of that into the story of Milly and Val, two lifelong friends and new mothers who keep coming apart and returning to one another." 

The book is already making waves, with New York Times bestselling author Catherine Newman saying "Take What You Can is so brilliantly, unbelievably good I have a burning in my heart from gulping it down too fast. It is somehow both taut and expansive—a literary feat I don’t understand—and it’s about the pleasure, grief, and devotion of daughters, mothers, lovers, wives. But mostly it’s about the coming together and coming apart of a singular epic friendship between two women. Love is utterly bewildering, and nobody writes about it better than Naima Coster."

Award-winning author Megha Majumdar called the novel "a magnificent book of emotional precision and startling insight, as awake to beauty and light as it is unafraid of the shadows."

Coster is the author of What’s Mine and Yours and Halsey Street. Her work has been the finalist for a Kirkus Prize for Fiction, named a must-read by People, Essence, BitchMedia, Well-Read Black Girl, The Skimm, and the Brooklyn Public Library, and named for best books of the year by Kirkus, Amazon, Esquire, Marie Claire, Ms. Magazine, The Millions, and Refinery29. She is the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35. Along with her two novels, she has placed stories and essays in The New York Times, Elle, Time, Kweli, The Cut, The Sunday Times, and Catapult. 

Take What You Can will be released on July 7, 2026.