The session has now concluded. Thank you to those who have followed along. I would also like to thank Jemimah Wei, Rob Franklin, and the Texas Book Festival.
@texasbookfest.bsky.social

“One thing that carries true is the question what does it mean to live with integrity with a rapidly evolving world?” Wei said.

Wei says that her family has always been really supportive, although her mom is the only one who has truly read her book, while everyone else just bought it.

“When we look at our relationship we think of what we need, what we want, and what we actually have,“ Wei said.

“Nostalgia is a real drug, the revision of the book in the United States allowed me to be truthful,” Wei said.

“Finding the structure is what really helped me finish the novel,” Wei said. “I would try and teach myself by buying craft books and learning for years and years, returning to my novel which took nine years.”

When asked what was the inspiration for her novel, Wei said “she wanted her first novel to be a love story but not romantic”. She said she believes that everyone’s first relationships growing up revolve around love stories.

Wei has arrived and begun speaking. Unfortunately, due to flight cancellations, Franklin will not be joining us today.

Rob Franklin, author of “Great Black Hope,” is an Atlanta-born fiction and poetry writer, and cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, his work has been published in Prairie Schooner and The Rumpus.

Jemimah Wei, author of “The Original Daughter,” is a Singaporean writer and 2022–2024 Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Before her MFA at Columbia, she spent nearly a decade in broadcast media and content creation.