Month: June 2013

  • For years Andy and I have talked about going on safari in Africa. Two weeks ago we actually did it. Here’s an overview of our trip: We flew from Cincinnati to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Johannesburg, stayed overnight, then flew from Johannesburg to Maun, and finally Maun to the Moremi Game Reserve (on a teeny…

  • Veronica Roth’s speech at Book Expo America 2013: Every writer I know is also here to learn — about spaceships and fall-out shelters and international abduction and horitculture and language and everything. Everything else, everything that makes this world strange and rich and mysterious and ugly and beautiful. Humility in reading and in writing really…

  • A couple weeks ago, the New York Times asked a dozen writers to share their memories of reading in the summer. I was not among those invited, hehe, but I’m participating anyway. … Growing up, my parents and I went back to my mother’s homeland every 4 years or so. Just getting there took almost…

  • I was born in America to a Taiwanese mother and a Caucasian father. I grew up with three other “halfie” friends, their mothers also immigrants (former classmates of my mom’s) and their fathers white men from this country, just like mine. Three boys and me, only two of them brothers, but all of us family…