In an interview with YA author Katie Zhao, our volunteer Veronica dives into Zhao’s experiences as a Chinese American writer, how her background and upbringing influence her writing, as well as the creative choices behind her novels.

Blogger Long Vo interviews author C Pam Zhang for her debut novel, How Much of These Hills is Gold. The story puts two recently orphaned siblings in the middle of the American Gold Rush, vying for a home in the unknown. The novel has been named one of the most anticipated books of 2020 by The Millions, The Week, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, receiving stellar reviews from The New York Times and USA Today.

In this profile, they discuss the importance of who gets control of written history, challenge the immigration story and deconstructing grief.

Psychoanalytic, Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor, and Author, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung debuts her book The Eighth Girl to which is a “ A multi-layered and compelling exploration of Dissociative Identity Disorder.” Creative Blogger Long Vo gets a change to interview Maxine Mei-Fung Chung as they talk about the importance of diverse stories that are socially responsible to be accurate, using empathy in her creativity, and even had a small chance to celebrate her Netflix deal for the book.

Author Thea Lim explores themes of love and grief through a science-fiction time travel story, An Ocean of Minutes. The Toronto Star raves, “Lim comes into her own here, with prose that’s elegant and haunting, somehow managing to be both unsentimental and deeply moving at the same time. A devastating debut.” For #KollabSFGetsLit, we get the opportunity to talk to Lim. In the interview, we cover what trauma means in terms of being “Stuck in time,” being a 3rd culture kid, and being apart of Mariah Carey’s lambily.

Debut author Nicole Chung releases her book All You Can Ever Know, a very personal story of her quest finding her birth parents while navigating in a predominant white environment, including her family. This insightful and suspenseful book has already received immense attention and acclaim from prominent media publications, including: A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, An American Booksellers Association, Library Journal’s Fall Editors' Pick 2018, The Washington Post’s 1 of 20 Books to Read This Fall, and the list continues to grow.

In this interview with Kollaboration SF, we share her unique writing journey and discuss what an editor should do, #AsianAugust, and a writer's voice.

Kirstin Chen’s new novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, is set on a tiny island on the coast of Southern China in 1957 and a family gets in trouble with government authorities and has to flee very quickly to Hong Kong.  The book has been listed in Most Anticipated Upcoming Book by The Millions, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Harper’s, and Bazaar. Writing a book of this magnitude was not easy for Kristin as her literary journey leading up to this writing Bury What We Cannot Take was an amazing story in it’s self. KollabSF breaks down this journey and interviews Kirsten on the phone as we talk about her essay writing (to which I enjoy them tremendously), being Singaporean, and the feeling of the life or death of your first novel.

Crystal Hana Kim, in her debut novel If You Leave Me, explores the repercussions of a country in war. The book is a timepiece during the Korean War that’s told through the first person narratives of protagonist, Haemi Lee, and her love triangle between her childhood best friend, Kyunghwan, and his older cousin, Jisoo. TheMillions.com review of Kim’s book highlights this feat, “Kim alters the expectations of the genre of war to include a much stronger focus on women and the multigenerational cultural changes that occur in and after a war caused by a global power struggle.”

Kollaboration SF gets the opportunity to Interview Crystal Hana Kim and talk about her book, her inspirational grandmother, and her feelings on releasing the book to the world.

Lucy Tan’s debut novel What We Were Promised is a story that follows the Zhen family has moved back to China after spending their lives chasing the American dream. Lucy explores heavy themes like classism, going from immigrant to an expat, and concepts of belonging, as US Today reviews, ““What We Were Promised” is bustling with themes like these, ones that focus on the terrifyingly complex facets of what it means to be Chinese-American, an immigrant, and an expat. But Tan certainly has enough bandwidth to handle these heavy topics, sifting them through a single family with forlorn honesty and compassion.” Kollaboration gets a chance to interview Lucy Tan about her writing process as an Asian American woman, her challenges of having a bilingual home as a writer, and ask her experience as a Asian American actress.

R.O. Kwon’s debut novel The Incenteraries has been named “Most Anticipated Book of 2018” by many news outlets such as PBS, New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly. The anticipation and the press is well-deserved considering that she had been working on the novel for the past 10 years. I got the chance to talk to R.O. Kwon on the phone to discuss her influences, her sense of family and community, and even karaoke.