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Full Name : Jean Kwok
Website: Jean Kwok
Birthplace: Hong Kong
Raised In: New York City
Current Location: The Netherlands
Genre: Fiction
Most Recently Published Work: Girl in Translation

Can you tell us a little about Girl in Translation?

Girl in Translation is the story of a young Chinese immigrant girl named Kimberly Chang who starts leading a double life: exceptional school girl by day and a factory worker in the evenings. Since she needs to hide the harder truths of her life – her extreme poverty, the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders—she learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself, back and forth, between the worlds she lives in. In the end, she needs to choose between the worlds she straddles and the two very different young men who love her.

Girl in Translation is a work of fiction but it is based upon my own life. Like my characters Kimberly and her mother, my family and I also immigrated from Hong Kong to New York City when I was a child. We too went from being fairly well off to needing to start our lives all over again. When my family started working in a sweatshop in Chinatown to survive, I had to go along to help work, even though I was only five years old. We lived in an apartment that didn’t have any central heating, and was swarming with cockroaches and rats. The only way to have any warmth at all was to keep our oven on throughout the long bitter winters. Fortunately, like Kimberly, I also had a talent for school. Although I struggled initially, I was soon able to learn English and ultimately went on to study at Harvard.

When Kimberly and her mother moved into their first rundown apartment I could see all of its cracks and roaches. I even felt the cold. The stories visual strength is due in part to your connection to the main character. So why a novel and not a memoir?

The main reason I chose fiction rather than memoir was because I never wanted to talk about my own background. I thought I’d be able to hide behind the fact that this is a novel but when the book began to receive a great deal of international attention, it became clear that the autobiographical aspect was an essential part of my message. People wanted to know if working class immigrants could actually live under such harsh circumstances, and I understood it was important to answer, “Yes.”

The book has been received so warmly by critics and readers alike that my shame has now turned into pride. I am glad I was able to tell our story because I know there are so many other Americans in similar situations.

There's a beautiful ease to this story. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down. What to you think made this story such a page turner?

I’m always so glad to hear that. I did work hard on making it that way. Another reason I chose to write a novel instead of a memoir was because in order to make the book a compelling read, I needed to experiment with language and structure in ways that are not possible in a memoir. It took me ten years to learn enough craft to write this book.

I was interested in the idea of using the first person narrator – the “I” voice– in a new way. I wanted to put the reader into the head and heart of a Chinese person and there by give readers the experience of actually becoming a Chinese immigrant for the course of my novel: to hear Chinese like a native speaker and to

Full name: Wendy Wan-Long Shang

Hometown: Fairfax, Virginia

Current location: Falls Church, Virginia

Website/Blog: wendyshang.com; I also belong to a blog of middle-grade writers called fromthemixedupfiles.com

Genre: middle-grade fiction

WiP or most recently published work: The Great Wall of Lucy Wu


Writing credits: The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, plus some legal publications. I have an article in The 4:00 Book Hook, a monthly e-newsletter on children's books, coming out next month.

How frequently do you update your site? monthly

Is your site designed for reader interaction? no

Post of note, something in particular you want readers to check out:

On the Mixed-Up Files, we really pride ourselves on covering everything related to middle-grade books. I was very proud to showcase a children's book club for teachers at my son's school. Here is the link.

Top 5 books that turned you into a writer?

Blubber, by Judy Blume: This was the first book I ever read that had a contemporary, Chinese-American character. This book taught me the importance of having characters that children can relate to.

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri: Her prose is so delicate yet powerful. I have to say that the first time I read her work, I felt as though I was reading in a whole new way.

Take the Cannoli, by Sarah Vowell: Her work makes me laugh and think in equal measure. I would love to have that effect on a reader.

Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: For me, Juster didn't color outside the lines. He invented new colors, and molded the lines into new dimensions. Rarely a day goes by without some quote from that book popping into my head.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Kongisburg: Everything about this book is a marvel to me: the structure, the voice, the style. I love that in the mid

Full Name: Isabel Wilkerson

Birthplace: Washington D.C.

Website: IsabelWilkerson

Genre: Narrative Nonfiction

Most Recently Published Work: The Warmth of Other Suns


How frequently do you update your site? The website is updated about once a month. I'm hoping to update more often. Facebook is updated several times a week.


Is your site designed for interaction? The site is not currently designed for interaction. That is a top priority in the coming months. Please check back soon.

Can you tell us a little about The Warmth of Other Suns?

The Warmth of Other Suns is a work of narrative nonfiction about one of the biggest underreported stories of the 20th Century: the Great Migration of six million African-Americans from the South to the North and West throughout much of the century. This migration was a defection from a caste system that controlled the lives of everyone in the South until it was finally dismantled after the civil rights era. This migration changed the country North and South and reshaped American culture as we know it.

In "The Warmth of Other Suns," the story of this migration is told through three people who set out for New York, Chicago and Los Angeles along the three main migration streams out of the South. They each left under different circumstances, for different reasons, from different states, during different decades and their lives unfolded in different ways in the New World.

I don't read a lot of nonfiction but I loved The Warmth of Other Suns. When I finally picked it up I couldn't put it down.

How often do you hear similar sentiments from other fans?

Thank you for the kind words about the book being hard to put down. I hear that all the time, and it warms my heart to know that all the work that went into making the stories come alive was worth the effort. Another thing that people say is that they sometimes have to put it down and contemplate what they have just read because parts of the book -- or rather, parts of fairly recent American history -- are so difficult and at times, wrenching.

They also note the funny and ironic parts of the book that come through because each of the protagonists, despite the hardships they faced were keen observers of human behavior and had a great sense of humor. Others have said they were sad as they neared the last pages because they had grown to love the three characters and did not want the story to end

What's the key to writing engaging nonfiction?

I think the key to writing engaging nonfiction is, first, to have a passion for the subject because you will need it to get through all the hard work this entails. Second, finding fully realized protagonists who are dedicated to the truth of their experience, through whom to tell the story, because in nonfiction, you can't make it up!

Finally, telling the story as a narrative -- meaning a character-driven unfolding of things with a beginning, middle and end, rather than a dry recitation of facts based on categories or subject headings. This helps draw the reader in and stay with the story to see how everything turns out

African Americans mass exodus out of the South during Jim Crow changed the landscape of America, yet your debut is the first to focus solely on this movement. Why do you think