“Born and raised in Brooklyn,” read the first line of my author bio, sent to me by my editor in preparation for my debut novel's publication. I was instantly disheartened. Sometimes it seems that nothing I do in life will ever exceed that initial, ignorant accomplishment: growing up in what has become the cultural mecca of turn of the 21st-century America.

I left Brooklyn when I was 18 and haven't lived there since. I went to college on the Upper West Side. It took over an hour on the subway to travel between home and my dorm room, and I always had the sense, when I begrudgingly made the trip, that I was disappearing underground in one world (ivory tower campus, sushi) and reappearing in another (liquor stores, pawnshops). But that was before Brooklyn was Brooklyn. Or when Brooklyn was Brooklyn. You get the idea.

Depressed over the bio, I made some calls. Friends in Edmonton, Alberta, dismissed my concerns. “Come on,” they told me, “your novel takes place in Brooklyn—the publisher is just trying to establish authenticity.” I knew Brooklyn, I could write Brooklyn—it was like Joyce and his Dublin, wasn't it, how one had to leave it to write it? My publisher was simply underlining my credentials.

“But it's more than that,” I explained, my voice whiny with the frustration of not being understood—the same tone my three-year-old uses when I don't take one of her caterpillar sightings seriously enough. “It's like if I don't have a connection to Brooklyn, I don't count.”

“You're taking this way too seriously,” they told me, probably labeling me as some crazed outer-borough conspiracy theorist. I wanted to believe them, but, well, they were from Edmonton! They were used to being marginalized.

So I called my Brooklyn friends for their opinions. As I dialed their cellphones, I reflected on the fact that my Brooklyn friends weren't my friends from Brooklyn. The few childhood friends I've kept in touch with have left the city, yet I know more people in Brooklyn than I did when I lived there, since lately it seems everyone I've ever met has moved there. I solicit their subway directions and restaurant recommendations, having resigned myself to tourist status when my Brighton Line got rerouted. Of course, not one of my Brooklyn friends picked up the phone. They were too busy buying messenger bags at Brooklyn Industries or catching a classic film at BAM.

I thought about calling my parents for reassurance, but thought better of it. My mother, herself born and raised in Brooklyn, has waited a long time for Brooklyn's ascendance: 65 years, to be precise. There isn't a gentrification initiative she doesn't kvell over; she actually called to brag when Target opened at the Flatbush Junction. And who can blame her? After a lifetime of feeling inadequate because of her zip code, she now lives in a house that's worth nearly a million dollars with a trendy “bistro” within walking distance.

When I began writing my novel, I was living in Philadelphia. This was acceptable—these days Philly is more Brooklyn than Brooklyn. My agent came on board while I was in Toronto. We'd crossed a border there, but Toronto and Brooklyn are both residential cities of astonishing diversity—they've got loads in common. By the time my publisher committed, however, I was living in Victoria, British Columbia. Never heard of it? Ask around: someone's grandparents—maybe even your own—spent a few days touring gardens here before boarding an Alaskan cruise. I actually love it here. But it's a long way from home.

Feeling doomed to a lifetime of Geographic Irrelevance, I did some research at my local bookstore, finding hot titles by young authors (easy to identify, with their requisite blurbs from Gary Shteyngart) and flipping to the author bio. Without fail, the last line of each read: “She [or he] lives in Brooklyn.” Where were these bright lights born? No idea. Just as I suspected, the literary map begins and ends with Brooklyn.

In the end, my literary success may come down to whether Brooklyn in the first line of a bio has the same impact as Brooklyn in the last line, whether the past can have as much oomph as the present. And who knows, if my book does well enough maybe I'll even be able to afford to move back to Brooklyn.

Overlook will publish Ilana Stanger-Ross's novel, Sima's Undergarments for Women, in January.