Christal Roberts was named a runner-up for the 2025 Sisters in Crime Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award for her unpublished novel A Killing in Black Newport. Set in a fictional Rhode Island seaside getaway for wealthy Black vacationers, nicknamed ‘Black Newport,'” the novel follows a disgraced Black journalist who finds the dead body of a former source in a Gilded Age ruin. When she doesn’t call the cops, she must overcome a hostile editor, angry locals, and her own toxic mother to find the killer and get the scoop of a lifetime.