Author Interview/Profile Archives - Page 4 of 10

Prophecy and Warrior by Ellen Oh + Author Profile [in Bloom]

08 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Ellen Oh’s Prophecy Trilogy and Why #WeNeedDiverseBooks For Ellen Oh, good things seem to happen in threes. She’s the proud mother of three daughters. She’s had three careers – lawyer, professor, and finally a published writer (after 40!). The third book she wrote got her a three-book...

Author Interview: A.X. Ahmad [in Bloom]

21 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Amin Ahmad not only writes mysteries – The Caretaker and The Last Taxi Ride make up two-thirds of his Ranjit Singh thriller trilogy – I confess he remains quite a personal mystery.] While he’ll answer almost any question from a distance, he’s been quite agile avoiding our carefully...

Author Profile: A.X. Ahmad [in Bloom]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

“You Won’t Believe What Happened!”: A.X. Ahmad’s Ranjit Singh Mysteries “Everyone in my family is a storyteller,” A.X. Ahmad told Charlene Allen in an interview for The Brooklyn Rail. “Nobody has ever had a normal day, and the stories always started with, ‘You won’t believe what...

Author Interview: Vaddey Ratner [in Bloom]

05 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Cambodian, Cambodian American, Fiction, Memoir, Repost, Southeast Asian American

Almost two years after Vaddey Ratner made her New York Times bestselling debut with In the Shadow of the Banyan – her fictionalized account of her survival, as a young child, of the Khmer Rouge genocide that took most of her family along with some two million others...

Author Profile: Vaddey Ratner [in Bloom]

03 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Cambodian, Cambodian American, Fiction, Memoir, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

"To transform suffering into art": Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan While the Vietnam War ended for the United States with the April 1975 military withdrawal, death and destruction continued, moving into neighboring Cambodia and Laos. With the evacuation of U.S. troops, the Communist...

Author Interview: Nina Schuyler (Part 2) [in Bloom]

09 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Following is Part 2 of an extensive interview with author Nina Schuyler. Click here to read Part 1. Click here for the Schuyler feature. As a writer who is a woman, who also happens to be a mother of two small young kids – do you feel...

Author Interview: Nina Schuyler (Part 1) [in Bloom]

08 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

With all the vastness of the internet, I had quite a difficult time finding answers to the sorts of questions I had about Nina Schuyler and her relationship to her fiction – most especially regarding race and identity. (I know, so loaded!) In both of her lauded novels...

Author Profile: Nina Schuyler [in Bloom]

06 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

"Like most writers, I work at the edges of the day" Wife, mother, teacher, poet, writer – Nina Schuyler wears many labels. Her youngest is still a toddler, she balances multiple part-time jobs, keeps up with the daily-life expectations of cooking and laundry, soccer and basketball mom-ing, not...

Author Interview: Julie Wu [in Bloom]

30 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Taiwanese American

At 22, Julie Wu had a “vision” about a sad young boy that she immediately rushed to capture in words. From those initial notes, she would take almost a quarter century to bring him to the page: at age 46, she “bloomed” as a first-time novelist....

The Third Son by Julie Wu + Author Profile [in Bloom]

28 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Taiwanese American

Vision and Reinvention: Julie Wu’s The Third Son So how many detours can a writer make before becoming that writer? If you’re newbie novelist Julie Wu – who knew as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1980s that writing was what she wanted to do – the answer might include a Master’s program...

Author Interview: Kim Thúy [in Bloom]

18 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Memoir, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Kim Thúy is one tough writer to get to, although she declares in our first email exchange when I finally track her down, “I am not at all the kind who plays hard to get :-) .” Attempts to contact her included pleas to both her...

Author Profile: Kim Thúy [in Bloom]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Memoir, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Kim Thúy’s Ru: An Apple for the Reader Ah, well . . . better start with true confessions: my words appear on the back cover of the U.S. edition (at least the first printing) of Vietnamese Canadian author Kim Thúy’s debut novel, Ru. The blurb is...

Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folktale by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, illustrated by Susy Pilgrim Waters + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

05 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

When I recently caught up with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, she was in one of her rare lull periods at home in Houston, Texas, having finished almost three solid months of book touring for her latest novel, Oleander Girl. Like her latest protagonist, Korobi Roy, a...

The Blind Man’s Garden by Nadeem Aslam + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

01 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, Author Interview/Profile, British, British Asian, Fiction, Pakistani, Repost

From the opening few pages of reading a Nadeem Aslam novel, I knew his writing was something to treasure and behold. Serendipitously, I used my then-day job to bring the Pakistan-born, British-educated-and-domiciled Aslam over the Pond to be a featured guest at the then-annual South...

Author Interview: Don Lee [in Bloom]

29 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

With his eyes and body still “bleary from post-windsurfing and traveling,” Don Lee nonetheless graciously agrees to be grilled yet again – we’re going on a decade-plus of various interviews through four books! He’s tired, he’s rambling, but he’s always entertaining … and once more...

Author Profile: Don Lee [in Bloom]

27 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

When Don Lee’s first book debuted in April 2001, he probably didn’t know that he was the forerunner of a colorful trend – literally. His collection, Yellow, had the shortest of subtitles, simply Stories. Three months later, in July, another yellow-tinted cover appeared: Yell-Oh Girls!: Emerging...

On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

06 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Sri Lankan, Sri Lankan American

Allow me to start with the simple end: Ru Freeman's On Sal Mal Lane is stupendous. I'll even embellish that verdict and add that it is actually fan-huththa-tastic...

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

01 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Iraqi American, Jewish, Repost

It began with a story. I know, I know, that's what they all say. But Jessica Soffer's debut novel, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, really did begin with a short story she wrote in 2009 for a graduate school assignment. In sharp contrast to the novel's...

Author Interview: Pauline A. Chen [in Bloom]

20 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Taiwanese American, Young Adult Readers

A couple of days after filing my feature on Pauline A. Chen, I got on the phone to ask her all the questions I couldn’t find answers to out there in the virtual world of google-ing. True confession moment: I admit I was a wee bit...

The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen + Author Profile [in Bloom]

18 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese American

When the teenaged Pauline Chen arrived in Harvard Yard, her intention was to become a writer. The American-born daughter of Taiwanese parents, she grew up amidst Long Island’s endless strip malls and was determined – she wrote in July 2012 at Tribute Books – to shed her “provincial” upbringing....

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