Lauren Ho’s sharp-witted debut Last Tang Standing (Putnam) opens with 33-year-old lawyer Andrea Tang attending her matriarchal aunt’s Chinese New Year party, when unmarrieds and children are given ang paos, customary red envelopes of cash symbolizing luck and happiness which…
I’ve always tried hard to make things happen for myself. As a writer, I enter contests, apply for fellowships and residencies, and submit to journals. I seek out feedback wherever I can get it. I take writing classes, attend conferences,…
Dear Teacher, By this point, you’ve survived the flu, the stomach bug, and emotional outbursts from that one student in your classroom who never, ever misbehaves at home. “No problem,” you tell your principal as you wonder if the bottle…
At the end of 2018, for the third year in a row, I admitted defeat in my Goodreads Reading Challenge, missing my 45-book goal by seven books. So when the 2019 Reading Challenge posted this year, I was hesitant to…
I don’t know what you expected when you published your first novel. In truth, you tried hard to keep expectations low so that they would be met and perhaps exceeded. But the build-up to a book launch is so huge…
I had worked it all out: I was going on a five-day solo writing retreat at a friend’s house in Vermont. Just the time and space I needed to do a deep dive into a final revision of my novel….