Frenzy Presents: Pan-Asian Heritage Month 2023 - Summary
I have been invited by Team Frenzy to join a panel discussion with authors Kylie Lee Baker, Sarah Suk, and Alisha Rai about writing Asian-inspired fiction for young adults in celebration of Pan-Asian Heritage Month.
I am so grateful that I was given an opportunity to join this panel and learn about the authors and their books. I have not read any of their works previously but I am really looking forward to picking up their books. I have made a short compilation of the authors’ biographies and their new releases.
Kylie Lee Baker
https://www.kylieleebaker.com/
About
Kylie Lee Baker grew up in Boston and has since lived in Atlanta, Salamanca, and Seoul. Her work is informed by her heritage (Japanese, Chinese, & Irish) as well as her experiences living abroad as both a student and teacher. She has a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Emory University and is pursuing a master of library and information science degree at Simmons University. In her free time, she plays the cello, watches horror movies, and bakes too many cookies. The Keeper of Night is her debut novel.
Kylie’s new book is called The Scarlet Alchemist and it is part of the YA fantasy duology set in an alternate Tang Dynasty China, where a poor biracial girl with the ability to raise the dead gets caught up in the dangerous political games of the royal family. I love dark fantasy and the cover is absolutely stunning!
Summary
Zilan dreams of becoming a royal alchemist, of providing for her family by making alchemical gold and gems for the wealthy to eat in order to stay young forever. But for now, she’s trapped in her impoverished village in southern China, practicing an illegal form of alchemy to keep food on the table—resurrecting the dead, for a price. When Zilan finally has the chance to complete her imperial exams, she ventures to the capital to compete against the best alchemists in the country in tasks she’ll be lucky to survive, let alone pass. On top of that, her reputation for raising the dead has followed her to the capital, and the Crown Prince himself seeks out her help, suspecting a coming assassination attempt. The more Zilan succeeds in her alchemy, the more she gets caught in the dangerous political games of the royal family. There are monsters lurking within the palace walls, and it’s only a matter of time before they—and secrets of Zilan’s past—catch up with her.
Sarah Suk
About
Sarah Suk (pronounced like soup with a K) lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she writes stories and admires mountains. She is the author of young adult novels Made in Korea and The Space between Here & Now, as well as the co-writer of John Cho’s middle grade novel Troublemaker. When she’s not writing, you can find her hanging out by the water, taking film photos, or eating a bowl of bingsu.
Sarah’s new book is an YA speculative novel about a teen with a mysterious condition that transports her to the past when she smells certain scents linked to specific memories. Talking about her book, Sarah mentioned how certain smells of food (Korean potato) brings her back and makes her relive some oh her memories too. As someone who has a very strong connection to smells as well, I am very excited that someone wrote a book that is relatable to me as well.
Summary
Seventeen-year-old Aimee Roh has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to time travel to a moment in her life when she smells something linked to that memory. Her dad is convinced she’ll simply grow out of it if she tries hard enough, but Aimee’s fear of vanishing at random has kept her from living a normal life.When Aimee disappears for nine hours into a memory of her estranged mom—a moment Aimee has never remembered before—she becomes distraught. Not only was this her longest disappearance yet, but the memory doesn’t match up with the story of how her mom left—at least, not the version she’s always heard from her dad.
Desperate for answers, Aimee travels to Korea, where she unravels the mystery of her memories, the truth about her mother, and the reason she keeps returning to certain moments in her life. Along the way, she realizes she’ll need to reconcile her past in order to save her present.
Alisha Rai
About
Alisha Rai pens award-winning contemporary romances. Her novels have been featured on the IndieNext and the LibraryReads lists, and been named Best Books of the Year by Washington Post, NPR, New York Public Library, Amazon, Entertainment Weekly, Reader’s Digest, Kirkus, “O” the Oprah Magazine, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. When she’s not writing, Alisha is traveling or tweeting.
Alisha’s new book is her first step into YA contemporary. “While You Were Dreaming” is a story a girl with undocumented family members goes viral after saving her crush’s life in disguise. I love the idea that she is saving her crush while wearing a cosplay costume!
Summary
It’s a classic story: girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, boy finally notices girl when he sees her in a homemade costume. At least, that’s what Sonia Patil is hoping for when she plans to meet her crush at the local comic-con in cosplay.But instead of winning her crush over, Sonia rescues him after he faints into a canal and, suddenly, everything changes. Since she was in disguise, no one knows who the masked do-gooder was . . .but everyone is trying to find out. Sonia can’t let that happen—her sister is undocumented, and the girls have been flying under the radar since their mother was deported back to Mumbai.
Sonia finds herself hiding from social media detectives and trying to connect with her crush and his family. But juggling crushes and a secret identity might just take superpowers. Can Sonia hide in plain sight forever?
Besides the three wonderful panelists, we got to see a short video of Sunya Mara promoting “The Lightstruck”, a sequel to her YA epic fantasy debut novel, “The Darkening”.
Sunya Mara
About
Sunya Mara grew up in six different cities across five different states and now calls Los Angeles home. She studied film and business at the University of Southern California and went on to write and illustrate at Kobe Bryant’s Granity Studios. When not telling stories, she spends her time haunting old movie theatres and staring at museum walls.
Another video message was from Miranda Sun about her YA ghost debut novel “If I Have to Be Haunted”, following a teenage Chinese American ghost speaker who (reluctantly) makes a deal to raise her nemesis from the dead.
Miranda Sun
https://www.themirandasun.com/
About
Miranda Sun is a storyteller by nature and wordsmith by trade. A lover of science as well as mythology, she’s fond of exploring museums and aquariums wherever she goes. She makes her home in Chicagoland, where she drinks iced coffee in the dead of winter and keeps an eye out for magic hidden in plain sight.Miranda Sun is a storyteller by nature and wordsmith by trade. A lover of science as well as mythology, she’s fond of exploring museums and aquariums wherever she goes. She makes her home in Chicagoland, where she drinks iced coffee in the dead of winter and keeps an eye out for magic hidden in plain sight.
Summary
Cara Tang doesn’t want to be haunted.
Look, the dead have issues, and Cara has enough of her own. Her overbearing mother insists she be the “perfect” Chinese American daughter—which means suppressing her ghost-speaking powers—and she keeps getting into fights with Zacharias Coleson, the local golden boy whose smirk makes her want to set things on fire.
Then she stumbles across Zach’s dead body in the woods. He’s even more infuriating as a ghost, but Cara’s the only one who can see him—and save him.
Agreeing to resurrect him puts her at odds with her mother, draws her into a dangerous liminal world of monsters and magic—and worse, leaves her stuck with Zach. Yet as she and Zach grow closer, forced to depend on each other to survive, Cara finds the most terrifying thing is that she might not hate him so much after all.
Maybe this is why her mother warned her about ghosts.
In conclusion, being a part of the panel discussion on Asian-inspired fiction for young adults in celebration of Pan-Asian Heritage Month has been an incredible experience. Discovering the works of authors Kylie Lee Baker, Sarah Suk, and Alisha Rai has ignited my excitement for their books and the unique stories they offer. I am very grateful to HarperCollinsCanada and HarperPresents (FrenzyPresents) team for this opportunity.