 Welcome everyone and we are celebrating a API Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and we appreciate you all being here tonight. We have a lot of events coming up for a API month, and I will put a link in the chat momentarily with a link to all the events. All right, announcements, library announcements. Have you heard the main library opened yesterday? So exciting. And if you haven't seen the video on Twitter going around of the opening and our staff applauding our patrons as they came in it's a little bit of a might well it was too trigger for me a little bit I don't know about for others but yeah so good to see the folks fill up the the atrium of our beautiful library. And there's no date set but we are going to be opening other locations soon. So stay tuned for that and of course we have our library to go locations. So welcome you to the unseated land of the Eloni tribal people and acknowledge the many Rami Tosh Eloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards of the lands in which we work and reside in our beautiful Bay Area. The library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from the nations with whom we live. The link that I put in the chat box has a link to some resources and reading lists about indigenous culture and land rights. And if you know what native land you are joining us from you can put that in the chat. And if you don't know there's a map called native land.ca which will tell you what land you are occupying The library one thing I'm many things I'm proud about about working at the library but mostly we are not a neutral institution and our library stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and we are deeply hurt by the violence targeting and targeting Asian and Asian Americans that has been occurring, and not just in our community in San Francisco but nationwide. And we stand in solidarity with our neighbors and colleagues distressed and hurt by these attacks. These are all anti Black anti Asian racism both uphold white supremacy, and everyone is harmed by these racial structures. The library has been working hard on our racial equity commitment, and you can find that in the link that I put on, or if you just Googled SFPL and racial equity would find all of the work we've been doing. All right, announcements. Okay, here we go. Don't forget to wear that mask when you come to our libraries please and all over town it's not over, and just protect everyone who's working for us and serving us in the streets. Tomorrow night, author mariel long will be launching a book launch party and bringing poets with her so come check this out tomorrow 6pm. And this is a partnership with Kearney street workshop. So come check this out and support our poets on Friday, Mr Martin and and he's super fun. And every time we're like, how is he going to cook three things in one hour, but he nails it. He's a pro. He's amazing. On Saturday we have two events, starting with Tressa a graphic novel, sorry. Graphic novel writer and artists will be here, and they're joining us from Holland and from the Philippines. So some silver linings of graphic of shelter in places we get to bring all these people to our virtual library. And this graphic novel is just been optioned for Netflix. And you can check it out at your local library. And then same day at 3pm, we have an artist panel art as a vehicle for social and political change. And this one is hosted by our Eureka Valley branch. And I'll breeze through these but do know we have a lot going on for API month and I will put that link into the box writers. I know you're here tonight because you love writers so we have an author panel mystery author panel. API but it may author Lewis Gordon, talking about his latest book, freedom justice and decolonization. And we're celebrating the amazing Lea Vols and her book home baked my mom marijuana and the stoning of San Francisco, and super fun book, but also packed with history rich history of San Francisco, and that great time period of mixing humor, stoning and the AIDS epidemic so there's tragedy in humor combined. And this is part of total SF, which is Peter heart love and Heather nights podcast and happenings. And they'll be joining us quarterly so check it out. The page is a bi monthly read, sometimes monthly depending on how we're running in the shelter in place world, but may we're celebrating author Vanessa who's also a journalist for the Chronicle, and her book remove stars, also very San Francisco. And right now you'll be able to find all of these books, extra books we have extra copies of these books so you can check them out right now from our library. If you don't follow Chinatown pretty on Instagram, I suggest you do they are the best, the most stylish and wise seniors across six Chinatowns across America and Canada Vancouver. And now, without further ado, we have Alka Joshi, who has written the artist, and has an upcoming book, the secret keeper of job her, which will be out in June. Joshi is a New York Times bestselling author of the henna artist, a graduate from Stanford University. She received her MFA from the California College of Arts, and his work as an advertising copywriter and marketing consultant and an illustrator. Alka was born in India, in the state of Rajasthan. Her family came to United States when she was nine. She now lives just neighbors were neighbors on the California Monterey Peninsula with her husband and bad dogs. Without further ado, I will stop sharing and turn it over to Alka Joshi. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. And thank you so much, Anissa, and Lisa's in the background they're managing all of our techs so thank you so much everybody for being here. If you had told me at the age of 20, or when I was 30 or when I was 40 that someday I would be an author, a full time author and would be writing a trilogy I would have laughed, because that wasn't something that was in the cards for me. I spent my lifetime dreaming about, and I wasn't one of those people who always carried around a little book and wrote little stories or even kept a journal. I'm just not one of those people. I really thought I was going to be an artist. That was my thing. I was drawing I was sketching I was always wanting to do art. When I went to get my first job in advertising, I wanted to be an art director because I thought I was going to be drawing all the little storyboards. So I turned out, no, they said, you are a better writer. So we're going to hire you as a writer. So I sort of got pushed into writing I'm an accidental writer. But somewhere along 2008, I had been running my own advertising and marketing agency for a while. And my husband is the one who kept saying to me, I think you can write much longer form stories. You write these little stories you write commercials you write radio spots, and you write these advertising campaigns and marketing campaigns but I think you can write long form fiction. And I just sort of poo pooed the idea because I thought no no no you know I'm just a hack. I don't do like serious literature or anything. And he said well why don't you just you know take a class every now and then I started to take a couple of classes. And then what happened is that in 2008 there is this mortgage crisis looming over our heads. And at that time I'm thinking to myself. Okay, well I've been through a couple of recessions before in my business. And what happens is it lasts about two years solid that my business kind of goes down or people sort of scale back on their projects and so I thought okay, this time. What am I going to do with my two years sometimes I travel sometimes I read books, you know my life hasn't always been about working working working it's about sort of balancing out work and then doing other things. So my thought in these two years, why don't I take my husband up on the thing that he's been suggesting to me all of this time. And I am going to enter and master's program in creative writing. It's exactly a two year program perfect timing. At the same time that I'm doing all this, my younger brother is buying a condo in Jaipur. We used to live in Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan at one time. And we were, we also have all this extended family there so we don't go to India without also then stopping in Jaipur. Well he bought this condo just for my parents, because they were in their 70s are getting more nostalgic and he said you know you guys if you want to go and visit friends and family, no better time to do it than now. And here are the keys to the condo you can stay for as long as you'd like. So, you know, my mom said to me, let's go. And this is all around the time that I'm starting this program. So, mom and I are going off to Jaipur. I would travel around with her for a little while, hang out. And then I would go back and start my first semester, and then she would stay for a little bit longer, I would come back at the end of my semester and pick her up and then take her back home. And we made this trip about four or five times during my program because I had, you know, so many breaks I had a summer break and a Christmas break and all that. So we make this trip, and I am seeing Jaipur through my mother's eyes. So for the first time as an adult, I'm hanging out with my mom I have not been with her since I was 18 years old and left for college I've not lived home since then. And all of a sudden I am like hanging out with mom and we're going to the Pink City Bazaar, and we're going to the fruit shops and places where mom is saying, oh, there's that fruit, it's called bale. I can't get it in the United States, but that is my favorite fruit, it always was my favorite fruit. And then, you know, we go to the city palace for a tour, and we have Kulfi outside. It's a hot day. And my mother remembers the time that she had had an audience with the Maharani, who liked to meet the wives of the families who were all going abroad as we were in 1967, when my father decided to get a doctorate. So we're off doing that. And then at one point we hired a car, and we drove all the way to Agra which is about six hours away. And of course the Taj Mahal is located and Irene I see that your background is the Taj Mahal, yay. So we went there to look at the Taj Mahal but also to visit my mom's old school, which is something that, you know, for some reason she and her brother the next child in line. She was educated in Agra and went to school in Agra for most of their young lives, while my grandfather who was a magistrate, he kept getting moved around and getting transferred so he would take the younger children with them everywhere. So we went to Agra we went to my mother's old school we met the current headmistress it was really fun. And then my mother remembered that when she was 18, this was her first year in college she was studying psychology. She had to have kept studying psychology, except that my grandfather called her and said we have found this young promising engineer for you to marry it is time for you to come home. So mom goes home. She is a dutiful, well brought up young Indian woman she does what her parents tell her to do. Now she sees my father from across the room. She has never talked to him and does not even talk to him that day that she meets him, because there's so many people milling around the room who want to know who are these two people getting hooked up. And then the next time she sees dad, they are actually going, walking seven times around the fire to seal their fate for seven lifetimes and they are married. And then in four short years mom has three children. She never returns to school. She doesn't have a career of her own. Basically she is, you know, catering either to the three of us kids, or to my dad or to the many places that we keep moving forward because my father is a young and promising engineer and he is getting sent around to different cities to either be promoted or transferred or work on a whole new project. So my dad is one of those engineers in the 1950s in India who was helping rebuild India. And that formed a lot of my information about what India was like in the 1950s, which is when I start this novel. What I'm noticing as mom is sharing her young life with me is that my mother never had the kind of choices that she has always afforded me. So she said to me, you will make your own choice about your partner you will make your own choice about your career you will make your own choice about your family, whether you're going to have children how many you're going to have, you get to make all those choices because I will make them. But one thing for sure. I know you must have a way to support yourself financially before you get married. And that way, your future options will be open to you. All right, so you know I took her message to heart and I really, you know I loved working. So, so it was it was no brainer for me to follow her advice and do all of that. But I realized, you know, maybe my mother would have liked to have the same life that I did maybe this is why she set me up the way that she did for a more independent life. What if, as I am writing here in my program and I'm trying to write a novel. What if I create a character who is doing exactly what I think my mother would have liked to do. So she's married after two years but before children are born when it would have been too impossible to leave. And she forges a life of her own and she navigates the patriarchy on her own terms. So this is where Lakshmi, the henna artist is born. That is the genesis of where this whole thing started. This is so remarkable about all of this. I'm going to move ahead a little bit and just let you know that the henna artist is has been sold into 31 territories, and is being translated into 26 languages. Because this is not just a story about a woman in India. This is about an every woman's story. This is a story about women's agency, whether they get to have it they don't get to have it who gets to have it how do they get to have. And my firm belief that every woman in this world deserves to make the choices that are going to determine her destiny. So that whole story started with my mother. Alright, so I'm moving forward with a henna artist. It only took me less than a year to really come up with the actual story. What I'm really learning to do is how do you sustain tension. How do you move a story arc with so many characters, so that you are you as a reader can follow along. What is going on and not lose interest. That's really the crux of what you're trying to do when you learn how to write a novel. In my early drafts of the henna artist. It becomes my thesis. I know I still have a lot of work to do but I presented as my thesis at the end of two years, and this was in 2011. My mother is present. I introduced her as my muse, everything's hunky dory. And, but then within a year of that presentation my mother dies, it was very unexpected. Wow. Wow. Okay, so I wrote this book. It was for my mother it started with my mother and luxury is sort of a stand in for my mother. Now what do I do. Maybe I just don't do anything with this novel it's not meant to go forward maybe I'll do something else. And I put the book away. And by now the recession has calm down clients are calling they want some work. They're resuming some projects. So I just get right back to work. I go by, and my thesis advisor calls me and says hey Elka what happened to that novel that you were working on. So I explained to her what had happened and I put the whole thing away and she said you know what, let's work on it. And, you know, maybe working through some of the stuff that you still need to work on in the novel is a good way to sort of go through the grief process right. So we work on it together for about a year and a half, and then she sends it to her agent. Next thing I know, Emma Sweeney is calling me from New York saying, Hey, I love this novel I love luxury I love everything about the henna artists. And I've been to Jaipur because there's a literary festival there every January and I represented several of my author clients there. That's exactly what you're talking about when you're talking about Jaipur. Let's work on this. So I think wow, I didn't even have to go look for a literary agent this is amazing. Like how often does that happen, and I'm going to get published. And Emma said, not so fast. No, you still have some work to do on this novel. Now, for the next three years, I'm talking one year to your three years. Emma and I are editing this novel. She is telling me to cut out every other chapter. To add backstory to remove backstory to make some scenes more compelling and so on. Finally at the end of three years I say Emma when are we ever going to send this off to a publisher. And she said, Oh, well gosh, I'm a literary agent I can't tell you that you need to get yourself a professional editor. So I go find myself a developmental editor that's what they're called. And I have one who is lovely Sandra Scofield she teaches at the Iowa workshop every summer in Iowa and she just gives me lovely, lovely, lovely suggestions and a lot of great positive reinforcement. But I think I wonder if Sandra understood what I wanted to do with this novel. Why would she have me consider so many changes. So then I think I'm going to send it off to another editor. This time it's Ronit Wagman and Ronit looks at the novel and she also sends me back 15 pages of ideas and suggestions and so on. And at this point I just lost it, because I thought wait a second, why am I having to make all of these changes. It's been seven years since I started this project. If it came out of my imagination and this is fiction out of my imagination why is it that everybody else gets to tell me what to do with this novel. I give up. I'm not meant to be a writer. I'm not meant to put this novel out I'm not going to do it anymore. So I put it away. Another year goes by. And I am working I'm looking in my desk for something and I reach in I find this manuscript. And I, you know, it's just like one of those things you're curious and you start reading something that that you have written, maybe it's a sweater that you knit a while ago and you're looking at it thinking, Wow, I knit this sweater. I was looking at this manuscript. Oh, gosh, I wrote this 350 page novel, and I start reading it. And an hour later I'm still reading and I'm thinking, Hey, this is a pretty good story. I mean it's like I forget that I even wrote this novel I think I like luxury. I want to know what's happened with luxury I want to know what's happening with rather and with content I'm interested. So I thought okay, let me go back and look at some of those editorial comments again, and I look at them. And because I've had a year's distance from all of those comments now I can actually hear them for what they are. What these women are telling me is that this novel will definitely get published it has everything you need. It just needs to be tighter. And if I can just make some of these comments come alive on the page the comments that they've given me, then it could be a best seller. So I thought okay, I can get to work on that. I'd work on it. Another year and a half goes by. Of course I'm working to pay my bills at the same time but another year and a half goes by. And I finally send it off to Emma again. I say Emma, remember me. I haven't talked to you in three years but I'm hoping you still want to be my agent. Now, will you please look this over. And I've done exactly what you said I got myself, you know, an editor, I got myself to editors, and I have, you know, twice the work that I put into this. And I'm really hoping that you'll send it off to a publisher. She does. Within two months, we have a contract. The contract is from Mira books, which is a division of HTTP books which is a division of Harper Collins. This is what happens to an author after they get a contract. There's about 18 months to two years to go, before you're actually going to see the book in a library or at a bookstore. And during that time, you are working with your new editor at the publishing house. In my case, it's Kathy Kathy has suggestions that she would like me to make. She has some major character changes that she would like me to make so I'm going to, I'm going to do that. But at the same time the art department is working on a fabulous cover and this is the cover that they came up with which I just fell in love with right away when I saw it. This is the Japper Palace this woman coming out could be luxury coming out after one of her meetings with the Maharani's. The marketing department has said, you know, Alka you gave us a title for the book and we're just not sure about it. I think we really like to call it the henna artist if it's all the same to you, because this is where I have to confess to you I am lousy with titles. I am not a good title person. So don't ever ask me to title the book so they call it the henna artist because they say it telegraphs immediately what the book is about. Fine. The sales department at Harper Collins and mirror books they are doing an amazing job selling this book, because Harper Collins has had me go out to New York they've had me go out to Toronto they have me talk to the biggest book seller up in Canada. They have me doing all kinds of, you know, radio interviews and things like that. And it was just a wonderful way for me to sort of get used to the idea that they had expected the henna artist to be a really big book for 2020. The sales department has sold it everywhere. They have sold it into all the independent bookstores into all of the libraries and the Amazon and Target and Walmart and the indigo stores and Barnes and Noble everything. And everybody is just waiting for the release date to put the book up on the shelves. The release date, which was set remember 18 months ago was March the 10 2020. On March the 11 2020. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic. One by one. Every single book launch event is canceled. Every book signing is canceled. Every conference is canceled panel discussion is canceled. Every bookstore starts closing down. Every library starts closing down. And I just think to myself, shoot me now. Just shoot me now. What have I spent the last 10 to 12 years of my life working on. I won't get to talk to one reader. I let myself wallow in self pity for a couple of days. I said, yeah, you have to get back on the horse. I mean, there's no, there's no alternative. You just have to do it. You just have to do it in these kinds of situations. So I thought, okay, what can I do? I can let people know that I am here at home just like they are in lockdown. And they can contact me for their book clubs, because I love talking to readers. I really need to talk to readers. I want to talk to them about my book. And I put the word out on social media. I'm here. Please call me. Today, I have done 410 book clubs in the last year. And it's all because I really needed to talk to people because I couldn't go anywhere. And I have enjoyed it so much because every single book club has allowed me to go into 101586 living rooms. And I get to see what people have on the walls. I get to see their furniture. I get to talk to them about, you know, how they're faring during COVID. It's been really lovely to make that personal connection with all of those readers. So then I get a call from my editor while we're doing all of this. And she said, I hope you're going to sit down because I have some news. And I thought, oh my God, more bad news. This is just going to kill me. And she said Reese Witherspoon is going to announce your book as her May 1 book pick for 2020. And you could have just tilted me with a feather. I mean, it was so unexpected and it was completely stunning to have something like that happen because after everything, after all the stops, after all the starts, and then all the ups and all the downs, this is the last thing that I thought might happen. And then for the next four weeks, what I'm doing is working with Hello Sunshine Reese's book club people. And we are putting together social media. You know, a year prior, my editor had had the foresight to tell me, please get on social media, learn how to use social media and I had. One of the beautiful things about social media was that when you have a visual book, like the henna artist, where you can talk about what Jaipur looks like, what the food looks like the colors of the walls of people's houses and their saris and all the patterns of the henna. So visual, it makes it really easy to do social media. And I loved doing it I have really gotten into the whole social media thing so I give the Hello Sunshine people all this idea for social media and I start populating all of this stuff. And then we do a couple of cooking videos which was really fun for me, because it was like I was with my mother in the kitchen, you know she was like watching over me. And then let's see oh and then I had my older brother mother do a Maharani cocktail for me for the older Maharani who likes to water her orchids with gin and tonics. And he's our mixologist in the family so that was really fun. And of course my dad, my brothers, my husband, you know everybody is helping with social media ideas and things like that so it was really, really fun. And then finally may first arrives and now Reese and I are doing our zoom chat. And I just am so impressed with this 45 year old woman who has turned the publishing industry on its head. You know historically in the publishing world, if if a publisher had like this much of a promotion budget, they would put this much of it towards male authors and this much of it towards female authors. And it was just a gender bias that had existed forever in the industry. And Reese Witherspoon thought, well you know there's all of these books that are written by females that have a strong female at the center whom I just adore. I love these books and I tell my friends about them all the time. Why don't they get the full page ads in the New York Times. Why don't they get these kinds of opportunities that the male authors do. So she's that what what if I use my influence to make that happen. And that's exactly what she did just for short years ago, four years ago is when she started Hello Sunshine and now, when you look at the New York Times bestseller list, you'll see at least four or five of her selections on that list that is the influence and power of Reese it's been amazing. So I get to talk to this woman which is amazing. I was going to have a heart attack, but I actually kind of like, you know, got acclimated, you know, the longer we talked it was fine. Now, at the same time that Reese and I are talking it was really amazing that the bookstores had started to ship out books. Amazon has started to ship out books. Amazon has finally stopped just shipping out toilet paper and bath soap. They are shipping out books again. And so are Barnes and Noble and Kepler's and city lights and you know everybody is starting to ship out books which is fabulous. And those people who couldn't get access to the physical book, they start buying it on ebooks and on audio books and I had so much fun choosing the narrator for the audio book and working with her to do the audio book because she did an amazing, amazing job. She took us to the New York Times bestseller list in audio books. And within one month we are on all of the bestseller list, the New York Times, the LA Times, USA Today, Toronto Star, everything. And now the movie companies start calling. That's how fast things move now. So the movie companies are calling and I'm like help. So I asked my literary agency I said what do I do and they said okay we have a agency we're going to contract to in Hollywood called the Gotham group and it is run by a fabulous woman named Ellen Smith Bain. And she's the CEO and she asked me, Elka, do you see the henna artists as a as a movie or as a TV series? How do you see it? And I said, Oh, well hands down. I actually when I was writing it I saw it as a TV series, because there's so many characters and each of the each of the characters has sort of a plot line or a storyline that we're following. And I am addicted to bingeable shows where I can follow multiple characters, episode after episode and season after season. And I cannot help myself I try to I try to tell myself okay I'm just going to watch one episode tonight. And then I end up watching another episode and an episode after that and after that until my eyes are blurry. So I said I want this to be a TV series and a streaming series that is just like hard to put down so she said okay. So she told everybody who was interested, the author would like a TV series and those are the kind of proposals that we got back. So I'm looking over all these proposals they're like 3540 pages long, I don't know how to judge any of them. But I do have a chance to zoom in with all the production teams and each of them has a major actress tied to the that particular project. And I ended up choosing the team of Michael Edelstein who had been in charge of NBC Universal Studios in London at the time the Downton Abbey was getting filmed and he was very much responsible for making sure that that became a global enterprise. And he read the henna artist he said, Oh my God, I can see this being an Indian Downton Abbey. That's how we're going to play this, because it could be that lush. And we have the upstairs downstairs of Downton Abbey happening in the henna and we also have all these threads of colonialism and, you know, castism and colorism, and we have the interplay between all these different people and we have, you know, there's so much tension in this book we could totally make this an Indian He sends the manuscript to his friend, Frieda Pinto, and Frieda says, Oh my God, I love this book. Okay, I'm on board. Can I be luxury? Yes, you can be luxury. And also she wants to executive produce the novel because she wants to get into executive production. Okay, great. And then Michael has a first look deal with Miramax TV so now Miramax is on board. So, right now what's happening since I signed on the dotted line is they are in pre production, which means they're trying to figure out. They have a showrunner, they are, you know, putting together pilot episodes they're, you know, trying to figure out, I'm sure eventually they'll get to a crew and a casting and all of that kind of stuff. And then hopefully by, you know, COVID notwithstanding, hopefully by late 2022 early 2023, we might be filming. And of course it'll be in India so that's going to be really fun. Now, at the same time that we put the henna artist to bed, which is essentially when it gets sent off to the printer, a couple of months before it shows up on bookshelves. I started working on book number two. Now I didn't know I was going to be doing a sequel until Malik, one of the main characters in the henna artist. He has loomed so large in my imagination from the moment he showed up that he kept saying, I have a story to tell, I have a story to tell you have to tell my story. And it was it was that prompting by a character who has become part of my sort of my imaginative family in my head. That prompted me to write The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. And this book is coming out in June 22 on June 22. And it is the story of Malik as a 20 year old he is down in Jaipur on an apprenticeship at the Jaipur Palace learning about construction and so on. And Lakshmi has sent him down there much to the chagrin of Malik's beloved Himalayan tribal women up in the Shimla area, and Malik discovers some nefarious things that are going on with the construction. And of course he's going to meet up again with the Maharani's, both of them. He's going to meet up with the Sings and Ravi and Sheila who are now married. He, you know, there's a lot there's some new characters that you're going to be introduced to. But as he is trying to figure out how he's going to handle this, the, you know, how he's going to divulge the secrets that he is running into. So of course enlist Lakshmi's help to do that. But he's also trying to make it comfortable for all the people he loves to survive this scandal that he has unearthed. So that's what's happening in book number two. And then immediately as I was writing book number two I go okay I know what book number three now has to be and that has to be about rather being an adult. She's three years old she's in Paris she's a perfumer. She got married to a Frenchman who was traveling through the Himalayas. She has two little girls. She's really excited she's happy. She has the family she always wanted she's on the cusp of designing a signature scent for her master perfumer when there is a knock on the door, and somebody she hasn't seen in 18 years from the henna artists is on the other side of that door. So, that's the book I'm writing now book number three. So, it's been a very busy two years. So anyway, now I would just love to take any kind of questions that you guys might have about the writing process about, you know anything that's happening in any of these books. Oh, I should also mention you guys that the henna artist paperback came out on April the sixth of this year paperbacks usually come out about a year after the hardcover comes out. And we made the New York Times best seller list already two weeks in a row after the paperback came out so that's really cool. All right you guys. Who's got a question for me. We're happy to unmute you or you can place your question in chat. I see you have fans out here in the chat if you haven't seen it. Wonderful. Look at this. Lots of people giving the love and the. Yes, an amazing story. I always am like, I don't like historical fiction I don't like family dramas I don't and then I'm like, oh my God, I'm people too. Okay, I see that Irene has a question here how has your book been received in India. Alright, Irene, I'm so glad that you asked this question. Because I think I wanted to answer this also for the Asian American Pacific Islander audience you know when you write a book, and you don't live in that country anymore, do you have a right to write that book. Do other people think you have the right do, how do you make sure that it feels authentic to the people who are actually from that country. So I was very concerned about all of these things before the the henna artists came out, and I thought, oh no, you know what if they hate it but if they hate it. But I tried everything I could to make the henna artists as authentic as possible and that meant doing so much research. That is what historical fiction author does lots and lots of research. I read a lot of books that took place during that time, written by Indian authors. I watched a lot of movies. I watched a lot of movies that were taking place in 1960s in 1950s and 1940s to get a breath of all of that. You know there are phenomenal Indian writers like Tagore and Narayan and you know there's all kinds of Indian writers at the side. They are wonderful to read even today. It's all relevant today. I also talked to lots of people who are still alive because you know independence wasn't that long ago and so there are still people alive who can answer a lot of these questions for me. So I made it so authentic. And now the question that I'm asked by South Asians, who are either living in India or in Pakistan or in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, or even across the diaspora globally is, you haven't lived in India since you were nine, how did you get this so right. So that is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful comment to get from all kinds of folks. And I think one of the more touching comments that I get is from women who say, you got this right. This could have been my story. What happened to Lakshmi was my mother's story. What happened to Lakshmi was my grandmother's story. And so it's giving women a lot of, I think sort of this deep knowledge of maybe the history of women in that era, history of their own mothers and grandmothers. And also, I think it's giving young women today this notion of a nation that has progressed a lot in some ways, but maybe not so much in others, especially maybe when it comes to gender rights. So that is how I would answer your question. Thank you Irene. All right. Do you have a comment candy, Norlin says, do you have a comment about the caste system which underpins your story. You know, I wish that the caste system did not exist, but I think that, like the concept of a nuclear family, the, the caste system is going to be very difficult to eradicate in India. It's going to be around for centuries and centuries and millennia millennia millennia. So, it started off as a way to delineate jobs. Okay, so if you are a teacher, you're a Brahmin, if you're a spiritual guru you're a Brahmin. If you are in the army and you're guarding the fort and your rulers then you are in the warrior caste, you know, and on down the line. So, I think at some point that idea of the jobs being delineated like that turned into more of a class system. So, somehow the people who were Brahmins and warriors started to be sort of a higher class sort of people than or perceived as higher class than others, especially the ones who were doing the laundry, or lighting the funeral pyres. So, I wish that it didn't exist. And in 2019 when I went to India I went to also find out from young people how they're feeling about the caste system. And what I found is that a lot of people in the middle class and the middle class in India has grown substantially in the last 20, 30 years huge huge huge change for the middle class. So that we have a lot more wealthy people in the middle class who can afford to send both their daughter and their son to college and then to higher education beyond that. But what's happening now is that those women who are going to college and, you know, meeting people of all different castes and all different classes, you know, they're able to say, you know, caste doesn't matter to me, caste is not important. And then I asked them, are you going to have an arranged marriage and 70 to 80% of marriages in India are still being arranged by family, and they might say yes, my family will decide my partner for me. And then I asked, so are they going to look outside of your caste. And the answer is no, because that generation of people has grown up wanting to have a family that their daughter or son will marry into, who is also going to celebrate the same rituals, eat the same foods, speak the same dialect, raise their children the same way so they're very concerned about wanting to maintain their tradition. And so this is one reason why they parents insist on the same cast. Now I did run across women who say, I've fallen in love with another guy, he is, he is not somebody that my parents would have picked out for me because he's from a different class or a different family, but it doesn't matter to me and I've talked to my parents about it and I'm going to marry him. So that is also happening. Love marriages are on the rise. Whereas in my parent and my parents time, you know, when they were married in 1955, it might have been maybe 5% love marriages now it's 20, 30%. Now, along with this, I have to tell you also that divorce is on the rise. So as women, just the same as it happened here in the United States when women started joining the workforce and having their own income. They also then have a voice. They have a voice at home. They have a voice that says, I don't have to do the cooking cleaning laundry and bring home the bacon so you know somebody's got to help out. If her partner is not willing to make that change in their life, then divorce abounds. So in India, the divorce rates are going up. More so than that, I had this wonderful book club on Sunday and it was all of these Indian women in India, they're all working professional women. And what they told me is happening now with young women who are making an income that is even more than their husbands are making. They are getting prenup agreements before they, you know, in their arranged marriages, they are asking for prenup agreements. And also, I thought this was just hilarious. And a lot of them, you know, we'll just say, look, we're not going to give you a dowry, you know, groom's family, we're not going to give you a dowry, because the dowry was meant to protect women. You know, and say, look, our son will take care of you for the rest of your life. So your family has to give us gold and jewelry and that and money and all that kind of stuff. And these young women are saying, nobody has to take care of me, I can take care of myself so we're going to forgo the dowry. So I think that these are all positive steps toward a more liberated India and India that might be liberated from the caste system from the dowry system, and hopefully a system that recognizes women, you know, and their agency more. Thank you for your question. Okay, Libby says, yes, even though I'm not a Southeast Asian, it's a woman's story. Thank you Libby. Absolutely true. All right, what program, oh, Adrienne Philpott says a great name Adrienne Philpott I love it. Okay, what program was helpful for starting your writing and who did you get feedback from in the beginning. Do you have any words of wisdom for new writers to improve their writing. Yes, I do. Adrienne, one of the first things that I tell new writers is study with a teacher whose work you admire and study with a teacher whose work has been published in the last five to 10 years, because if they've been published in the last five years let's say they are more in touch with what's happening in the publishing industry, their agent will be more in touch with work that they can send off to a publisher. So, number three, study with somebody who is writing something similar to what you're writing. So for example if you're writing fiction, and it's let's say historical fiction like I was writing, please study with somebody who has written historical fiction. If you are writing, you know, and they don't have to be the only person you're studying with but please make sure that you study with somebody like that. If you are doing a memoir, make sure you study with somebody who is an excellent memoirist and whose book has been published and, you know, to a claim. So, study like, like, right so study somebody who is doing something like you are writing. And then also, it takes a village to write a book, please do not ever think that you have to write your book all by yourself. Please, please, please do not put that kind of pressure on yourself. There are so many people who will help you your, your teachers in your MFA programs I got my MFA program at CCA which is a California College of Arts in San Francisco. It was a great program, because they had working instructors you know instructors who had recently been published. It was very important for me to go to a program like that, and to learn from them. And as it turned out, it was my instructor Anita Amirasvani, who sent off my book to her agent and that's how I got my agent so very, very worth it for me. The reason that I did an MFA program is because I wanted two year intensive learning how to write a novel, learning how to write good scenes learning how to write dialogue, you know I took a whole bunch of different classes so that I could learn how to write all of those things. But in the meanwhile, I always made Anita my mentor, we got to choose a mentor every semester and so I worked with her one on one on the novel. So what else can I tell you about programs, you need to invest in yourself. If you think it's too expensive to invest in yourself, then, then let's deal with that first. You deserve to do something that is going to meet your heart where your mind is. You deserve to do the thing that is inside you that butterfly that wants to come out you deserve it. Invest in yourself, don't think about oh gosh it's going to be like $5,000 if I do this or $3,000 if I do that or this class is $350 or you know whatever please. Just know that you are worth it. You are worth investing money in yourself. Maybe you skip a couple of haircuts. Maybe your child does not get to have that fabulous Rivendale bike that they have been salivating over. You keep that money for yourself ladies because you deserve it. So that's what I would say to you. And then let other people help you make that book better. If I hadn't listened to my literary agent, I would have been so much farther behind in getting this book into a publisher's hand. If I hadn't listened to all those editors that I had had I would have been so much farther behind. Listen to the people who know what they're doing. I would not be where I am today if I hadn't listened to all of those people who are much more expert in the publishing and writing world than I am. Okay, so thank you Adriana for your question. Let's see what else do we have. I know I know I know we have other questions here so I'm trying to find them. I can jump in and read one to you if you. Thank you, thank you. Did you begin with the intention of writing a trilogy or did it evolve organically after completing the Hina artist. It evolved organically just like the story evolved organically. I never know what's going to happen at the beginning when I start a story. So for me, my stories have to go like this. Then another scene will come to me and then another scene and another scene. And then I have to figure out some way to weave these scenes together. So for me it's like threading a necklace. And all these scenes the major scenes are like beads. And I never know how that necklace is going to be what's what's the fastener at the end of the necklace. I don't know. Until I get to the end of my story until I've written the whole thing out. Ah, now I can go back and start revising and revising and revising the Hina artist the book that you're reading today is the 30th draft of my book. So take heart. If you think you've done like five drafts and you think you've done way more than you need to take heart it will take time to get everything right. This is a new, maybe this is a new sort of craft for you. And it's just like if you're learning to knit or you're learning to sew or you're learning to garden. It's going to take a lot of trial and error before you get to the point where you're really good at what you're doing. Did I answer the question, Anissa or was there. I think you did. I did not have the question but I think that's a lovely analogy of the necklace somebody definitely mentioned that there to you. Yeah, in the chat. Yes, that's right. That's right it started off with what did I know it was going to be a trilogy know so just like that I didn't know it was going to be a trilogy at all. All those years that I spent working on the henna artists I was really just trying to get really good at one novel I didn't want to like start all over again with another idea I just want to have this one idea. I wanted my mother's life to be reimagined. And so that was my goal, make sure that your intention for whatever it is you're writing is coming from somewhere deep within you, because that's going to resonate with readers. Don't write a story just because everybody else is writing about let's say they're their way of dealing with the pandemic, please don't. My agent told me that she receives 100 stories a day about the pandemic enough already she's not reading anymore. So, so I mean, don't join a bandwagon, work on something, deliver something from your heart that means a lot to you, because that will take you all the way to the line. It's wonderful. There's now there's just a lot of like thank you for all this work that you've done and your gifted storytelling Carmen says that you took her vicariously back to jumpboard. And then there was, I loved this comment. Let me see it's very up at the top. Oh yes, congratulations and all your success persistence pays off. Love the book, especially Malik and anti boss. I love when people connect to the characters and you have just set it up so lovely to flow into a trilogy. It's been, it's been lovely you guys and you know, I want to give a shout out to the San Francisco Public Library because I think that most of us authors were readers before we were writers. And we were the kind that just put our noses into books and maybe we were too shy like I was to talk to people. So I just buried my nose and books all the time. And what's lovely is that all of that pays off, you know, if you are shy kid and you did read a lot. Some day you might grow up to be a writer because all of that is now in your DNA. And you are able to spew it out in a in a in a way that is just yours in a customized way. So thank you, San Francisco Public Library for holding things like this and also, you know, giving all of us the opportunity to talk to one another, authors and readers. So wonderful. There's somebody here. Stans. Oh, this is a wonderful. This seems like a Dutch name. Is it Stans Kleinen Kleinen. I love the book. I lived in India Mumbai recently and can so relate to the stories I could not put it down. Thank you. My goodness, this is so great. That is what all of us authors want. We want to create a book that nobody can put down this is so so so important. Did I pronounce your name correctly. Is it. Yeah, Dutch name Stans Kleinen. I was actually a Dutch diplomat in India. So I love the book. Fantastic. I really signed up for the secret keeper of Jaipur. So please keep you keep writing. Thank you so much. Nomrata says, thank you so much to Alka and SFPL for this wonderful talk and connect I live in India and I love how India has represented the country and our culture. Oh, can I just say this one last thing. Anissa is that okay. Of course. This I this I really want to say to the API audience. I when I came here as an immigrant, I was nine years old, and we moved to Iowa, and nobody in Iowa had ever met anybody from India before certainly not in Ames, Iowa where we landed. I would get the weirdest questions as a kid I'm the only brown kid in all of my classes. And the questions I'm being asked are things like, Why do you worship cows, well I personally don't worship cows I don't know what people are talking about. And then they would ask me things like, you know, do you sleep on a bed or do you sleep on the floor and I was like, Well, of course I sleep in a bed. Do you know how to use cutlery. Yeah, I know how to use cutlery. So the questions that I was being asked. What are you doing about all the poor people in India. They really threw me because I understood in a very short period of time that what people were saying to me was that India was a backwards place it was underdeveloped it was a third world country. They had no idea that anybody read or, you know they only knew a single story about India and that was that India was poor and illiterate. So you know I come from the middle class so I could not reconcile those two worlds in my own head. And I decided okay I'm just going to be American. I'm just going to do everything American I'm going to talk American I'm going to wear my jeans and t shirts and I'm just going to pretend I'm not Indian, which is hard to do with my name and my skin color but you know I'm fooling myself thinking okay I'm so American. It wasn't until I started traveling with my mom to India and seeing it through her eyes that I realized oh my God. I do come from a place that does have poverty that does have illiteracy that has classism and colorism, but I also come from a land that is so gorgeous. I come from a land filled with color filled with people who are warm and inviting. I come from a land of resilience, because these are people who were dominated by the British for over 200 years by moguls for four or five centuries. These invaders coming through the north all the European invaders looking for silks and spices and gold and all this kind of stuff. And yet the Indian people are still resilient, you know they are still standing strong today, barring COVID, you know most recently, but initially they handle it in the most wonderful way possible. Modi did the most wonderful thing. He they unlocked off the country for two months, but then you know he can't control all of the nation. Each state in the nation just like in America we have each state that makes their own rules, each state started doing their own rules about you know opening up the border so whatever. Anyway, so what I got to do then what as I was writing the henna artists is to talk about my love of my heritage, and I got to reclaim my heritage as a result of writing this over 10 years. I just think that that was one of the gifts that the book gave that back to me. You know I thought I'm writing this book for my mother, but the book actually gave that back to me like I understand now that I am both East and West, and that is a beautiful combination. Many of you guys out there have lived both in the East and the West, and you feel like oh I don't belong to either. That's okay because you have the best of all worlds, you don't belong to either 100%, but you belong to both a little bit. And that is a beautiful place to write from it's a beautiful perspective that you have because you have a distance perspective and you also have the close up perspective so it's lovely. I hope that all of you out there who are planning to write about whatever country you came from, or whatever country, you know is in your heart, please do write about it because the world is hungry for what your stories to. That was beautiful okay thank you so much. And just you know and put it out there the library does have writing groups and we actually have one that is nurturing writers of color so you can find that in our library website or you know, sometimes our website's not the most easiest but just Google SFPL writers workshops and you will find them. You Google anything SFPL and you're going to find everything. I think this was such a wonderful evening and I am one, putting in the chat a link to tomorrow's event, but also a link to tonight's event with how you can get the Hanna artist and book to the secret keeper of Drucker and they're both available you will they're not available yet but you can place a hold on the secret keeper. So it's coming, it's coming and thank you all so much for a wonderful evening I am so glad we switched it over to meeting and it's, you know I miss seeing all of you beautiful faces I know a lot of you aren't from here but SFPL community is spread wide. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thank you Anissa. Thank you Lisa. Bye guys.