Welcome, Diana! The 24/7s are super excited to be interviewing you!
Happy to be here!
Let's get started with our favorite question. How did you find your way to becoming a kidlit author?
This is a huge question! Honestly, I never thought I’d be a kidlit author even though I love children’s books and it feels so natural for me to be writing in this genre. But when I was growing up, there were very few Asian authors and even fewer of them were writing children’s books. I never saw characters like me in the books I read, and it didn’t occur to write such a character because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in seeing a Chinese-American girl going on adventures and becoming a hero in her own story.
But then something magical happened around the mid-2010s.
Do tell! What was it?
When We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) was founded. WNDB and other organizations like it pushed kidlit that's written by historically underrepresented authors forward in a big way. I soon started to see more kidlit written by and about BIPOC communities.
I had stopped writing over a decade ago, but when I started writing again in 2017, I knew the kinds of books I wanted to write. I was fortunate to receive a 2019 WNDB Mentorship with the incredible Swati Avashti. Her mentorship not only helped me revise my manuscript so that it received offers of representation from agents, but it also helped me see that my stories were worth telling.
Necessary to be sure! So what inspired you to write The Unbeatable Lily Hong, your debut novel for readers 8-12?
It would have meant the world to me to read a book like The Unbeatable Lily Hong when I was a kid! Like my main character Lily, I was a Chinese-American kid who was good at school and into nerdy fandom stuff. Another similarity that I share with Lily is that I also went to Chinese school and did competitive Chinese dance. But those things made me an outsider when I was a kid, so I wanted to write a story about a Chinese-American girl whose differences and interests make her nuanced, irresistibly fun, and unbeatable.
And that’s the story I wrote in The Unbeatable Lily Hong. My children are now growing up with books that represent them--an amazing and necessary development that I am proud to be a part of.
Why was it important to you to include the theme of community in The Unbeatable Lily Hong?
Community has always been important to me! Speaking of community, the Muslim Storytellers Fellowship (offered by the Highlights Foundation and sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) has been invaluable in providing me with a community of wonderful storytellers who have supported and inspired me in so many ways as I wrote this book.
Did you have fun writing this book?
Writing The Unbeatable Lily Hong was so much fun to write! Drawing on my own interests while creating Lily, her friends, and her family, I got to immerse myself in Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, Chinese mythology, school competition, debates about the best dumplings (Lily’s mom makes the best dumplings, duh). Plus, there's a tween frenemy/maybe-more-than-friends dynamic, which I drew from my own experience growing up.
Very interesting! Who acquired your book and why are you glad your book found its home at that house?
Clarion Books is publishing The Unbeatable Lily Hong, and I am fortunate to have had two great editors there. My first editor was Angela Song, and she was the one to acquire my book. Angela got my vision for Lily’s story immediately, and her support and editorial eye was just incredible. She definitely saw me through the bulk of the edits, and the whole process was collaborative and generative. Alessandra Preziosi, my second editor, has been wonderful too.
By the way, my awesome agent Christa Heschke sent Angela a picture of me in full Chinese dance costume at age thirteen, and I don’t know if that had anything to do with Angela acquiring the book, but I don’t think it hurt! Also, Christa’s assistant Daniele Hunter is now a junior agent at McIntosh & Otis, so querying writers should definitely query her because she’s amazing.
A collaborative effort, to be sure! Well, thanks, Diana, for sharing your middle-grade-book journey thus far. We can't wait to learn more as your book-launch date approaches.
I'm looking forward to it, too. Truly excited to be a part of this great debut group!
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