Introducing the Author Advisory Program by Zibby Books!
This week features New York Times bestselling author Jean Kwok
With the launch of Zibby Books last year, our team seeks to reimagine the business of books as an entirely new kind of partnership between writers, editors, publishers, booksellers, influencers, and readers. The plan is to find new ways to launch and discover the stories that shape our world.
One of these new initiatives is our Author Advisory Program — a panel of bestselling authors who have dedicated their time and insight to Zibby Books authors. By sharing decades of experience in writing and publishing, the Author Advisory Program provides invaluable guidance to Zibby Books authors, while also enriching the writing process, and encouraging and championing Zibby Books titles from conception to completion.
Now, for the first installment of our “meet the advisors” Q&A series, we have the distinct honor of introducing Jean Kwok.
Kwok is the award-winning, New York Times and international bestselling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, Girl in Translation, and Mambo in Chinatown. Her work has been published in twenty countries and taught in universities, colleges, and high schools across the world. An instant New York Times bestseller, Searching for Sylvie Lee was selected for the Today Show Book Club and featured in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, CNN, The New York Post, The Washington Post, O Magazine, People, Entertainment Weekly, and more.
Read our short Q&A with Jean Kwok below. (And learn more about Zibby Books here.)
What books are on your nightstand?
Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids, edited by Zibby Owens, The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, With or Without You, by Caroline Leavitt
What’s the last book you couldn’t put down?
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
What’s a bookstore you love?
Books are Magic in NYC, owned by Emma Straub.
I’m currently finding inspiration…
From my community of writers and readers; and from my cats, of course! I always put my real cats into my books. My kids are like, “Hey, what about us?!”
Favorite place to write/edit?
On my mint green couch, complete with chaise lounge where I have tables set up with my iMac and a second monitor.
Who’s your first reader?
Angie Kim, Edgar-winning author of Miracle Creek. Angie and I exchange pages every week. We’re in a group called The Novelettes with Julia Phillips, National Book Award shortlisted author of Disappearing Earth, and we all check in with each other daily, as well as reading each other’s pages regularly.
How would you describe your books?
Poignant, heartfelt, suspenseful page-turners.
Tell us about how you use your own life as inspiration for your books
I always take inspiration from my real life. My debut novel, Girl in Translation, is about a very bright immigrant girl who leads a double life at her exclusive private school while working in a factory at night. That was based on my experience living in an unheated, roach-infested apartment while working in a Chinatown clothing factory as a child.
My second novel, Mambo in Chinatown, is about a dishwasher in Chinatown who becomes a professional ballroom dancer and needs to win a dance competition in order to save her sick little sister. That was inspired by my own working-class background and my years working as a professional ballroom dancer, plus my father’s illness.
My third novel, Searching for Sylvie Lee, is about a brilliant, dazzling older sister who disappears while on a trip to the Netherlands and how her younger, shy, stuttering sister has to find out what happened to her. That book was inspired by the real-life disappearance of my beloved, brilliant older brother.
People might be surprised to know that…
I’m the world’s worst cook but used to be a professional ballroom dancer. So I can supply your mambo needs, as long as you don’t need any snacks!
What do you like to do for fun?
I love to dance and now that my newest novel has just been submitted, I’m delighting in dancing again.
The best praise/feedback you’ve ever received?
A student who was reading my book in college said to his professor, “I think this novel stopped me from being racist because it made me realize that how people appear on the outside might be very different from who they are on the inside.”
What’s the most fulfilling part of being an author?
Having readers share their own stories with me when they tell me my work meant something to them.
What are you working on right now?
I just finished and am starting edits on my fourth novel, The Leftover Woman, which is about a young Chinese woman who takes a job as a cocktail waitress in an Asian strip club because she desperately needs to earn a large amount of money to avoid deportation, and winds up entangled with a wealthy American family, leading to murder.
