 everyone. I'm Rachel, a youth services librarian here at SFPL. And today I have the honor of being in conversation with Melinda Lowe about her award-winning book last night at the Telegraph Club. Before we get into the conversation, we're going to pay our respects to the Ramatush-Aloni peoples. We are broadcasting from the area now known as San Francisco, which is on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush-Aloni peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramatush-Alonis have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living, working, and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatush community. This event is part of Summer Stride. Throughout the month, throughout summer, the library offers free in-person and virtual programs for all ages and abilities designed to inspire reading, learning, and exploring for at least 20 minutes a day. Listening to this program counts toward one hour of activity. Sign up today and get a customized 2022 Summer Stride library book tote after 20 hours of activity, so if you sign up today, only 19 more to go. Visit Summer Stride, visit sfpl.org slash Summer Stride for book lists and upcoming events. Visit the library's YouTube page to see past events. In our virtual library, we have coming up tomorrow from 6 to 7 p.m., a panel of queer mystery writers passing on the torch. Four award-winning queer mystery writers are going to discuss the queer authors who influenced their work. And for in-person events, the new farm will be jumping with the children's book giveaway goats, chickens, galore, and live music this Saturday, July 2 from 1 to 5 p.m. SFPL, the new farm partner. Oh, next slide, I guess. Our next on-the-same-page book is going to be Beverly Jenkins' Wild Rain. It's going to be our July slash August selection. Wild Rain follows the story of a black female rancher Spring Lee in Wyoming after the Civil War. Spring has triumphed over a turbulent past and now owns her own ranch, wears jeans and sand dresses and is not looking for love. Then in walks Garrett McCray, an escaped slave now reporter in Washington who has come to Wyoming to do a story on doctors for his black newspaper. Garrett thinks Dr. Colton Lee will be an interesting subject until he meets Dr. Lee's sister Spring, coming soon to a library location near you. Now let's get this conversation started with a little bit about this book. A coming-of-age story, unlike any other, last night the Telegraph Club touches readers from tweens to 90-somethings. With the backdrop of the cookie cutter post-World War II America and a rampant McCarthyism outing and savaging suspected communist sympathizers, this story takes place in San Francisco during 1954. Lily and Kathleen Miller, students at Galileo High School, find themselves confronting treacherous challenges on many levels, the least of them being their academic futures. Classmates, friends and romantic partners, Lily and Kathleen's love story unfolds during a time of conservatism, suppression, heteronormativity, racial exclusion, and homophobia. For Lily, survival means learning to live in several realities, white America, San Francisco, traditional Chinese culture, and familial ties to Chinatown, and the lesbian enclave of the Telegraph Club. All about discovering and defining her identity for herself. For Kathleen, survival means learning to live in disparate realities of white conservative society, racist America, and queer society, while grappling with her own journey of self-discovery. In 1954, it was dangerous to be your true self, let alone find ways of expressing it and living openly. And more dangerous of all was crossing racial lines. What to make of two young women, one Chinese American and one white American, coming together and finding more than just friendship during such a perilous time. This is a story of unprecedented authenticity as well as emotional and historical candor. It is a testament to the hard-won struggle of what it means to live an authentic life, but most of all, it is a story that resonates fully of the human experience and desire for love and acceptance. Melinda Lowe is the New York Times best-selling author of last night at the Telegraph Club, winner of the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, as well as Michael L. Prince and Walter Dean Meyer honors. Her debut novel, Ash, a sapphic retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA debut award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction of Fantasy, the Myopoic Fantasy Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Lowe's short fiction has short fiction and non-fiction has been published by the New York Times, NPR, Autostraddle, The Horn Book, and multiple anthologies. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their dog. Thank you so much for joining us today, Melinda, and it is such an honor to have you here as part of our Summer Stride programming and to help us close out our Pride celebration. Yes, yay! Rachel, thank you so much for that incredible introduction. I am so happy to be here. I mean, I wish I was in San Francisco in person, but this is close, sort of. I imagine myself there. So yes, happy Pride. I'm wearing my We Need LGBTQ Books Dragon shirt. Yes, I love it. I love it. I was hoping that we could start this conversation off with a reading from your novel, if that's okay with you. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to read a brief scene. This is actually the first time that, well, not the first time. This is when Lily brings her friend, Kath, to a drug store to show her a lesbian pulp novel called Strange Season. So Lily really hopes that by showing the book to Kath, she can figure out if Kath is gay, instead of asking directly, because that would just be really hard. It's too hard. Okay. Lily spun the rack of Todry paperbacks again, then began to flip through novel after novel, hunting for the provocative cover of Strange Season, the blonde that had to be Patrice in her negligee on the floor, the brunette Maxine with dark eyes above in her sultry black gown. Lily was aware of Kath beside her watching, and she said, it's been here for weeks. I thought it would still be here. Kath pulled a book from the next rack over, a detective novel with the silhouette of a corpse on the cover and asked, what was the title? I'll help you look. Strange Season. Kath put the detective novel back and started to look through the other books. When Lily had finished with the romance rack, she moved on to science fiction, wondering if it had been mistakenly placed there. But at last she had to admit defeat. It's gone, Lily said, sighing. I suppose someone bought it. She couldn't imagine who might have had the nerve to put their money down on the counter. Someone very bold. What was it about? Kath asked. When she decided to show the book to Kath, Lily hadn't considered the possibility that it would be gone. She had hoped the book would do the work of voicing the questions she wanted to ask. But without it, she was back where she started. She was faced with a choice now. She could explain what the book had been about, or she could lie. Kath was watching her expectantly and there was something in her expression that made Lily hope that perhaps she already knew the book. But Lily told herself that was wishful thinking. In all the time they had spent together, all those Watts down Columbus, they had never brought out the Telegraph Club or Kath's friend Jean. Not once. Lily wanted to believe that the total absence of those topics signified their importance. But it probably meant nothing. She felt queasy and Kath reached out and touched her arm. Are you alright? Kath asked. Kath's fingers pressed lightly against Lily's upper arm. She saw both concern and curiosity in Kath's eyes. They were grayish blue, like the sky covered by a scutting sheet of rain clouds. Lily backed away into the corner between the science fiction rack and the rear wall of the store and Kath followed her. They were quite alone now and above them the fluorescent light buzzed as if a mosquito were trapped inside the bulb. It was about two women. Lily's mouth felt so dry she might choke on the words. That book, Strange Season, it was about two women and they fell in love with each other. And then she asked the question that had taken root in her that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Kath's eyes widened briefly and then she looked down at the floor and over at the science fiction rack and back at Lily, who felt her heart thudding like a drum, her blood rushing through her veins and turning her skin pink as she waited for Kath's response. An eternity seemed to pass. The heat of the fluorescent light on her head was like an artificial sun. The cash register at the front of the store rang like an alarm bell. Finally, Kath said one soft word. Yes. Absolutely love that scene. It is my favorite scene of all time because when I was reading it I was screaming yes, representation. This is why it matters. This is why we need to see diverse books. So that scene sent me on this huge search for other lesbian pulp novels and I imagine the amount of research that you put into this book must have been absolutely staggering. I did do a lot of research but I do love research so I probably did more than was strictly necessary. So, which brings me to what came first? The research or the idea for this novel? Well, okay. Interestingly, I was researching a different novel that I have not written when I came up with this idea for a story for this. So I was reading Two Books Wide Open Town by Nan Ella Miller Boyd, which is a history of queer San Francisco. It's an academic history text. And I was also reading a book called Rise of the Rocket Girls by Natalia Holt, which is about the women computers who worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab in the 40s and 50s. So these two books are totally unrelated, right? But I was reading them kind of in proximity to each other and in my head they came together to inspire this character of Lily, this 17-year-old Chinese American girl who's obsessed with rocket science and also thinks she might be a lesbian. So that's where, so the idea actually kind of emerged from research, which is interesting, but I wasn't researching this book when I was doing that research. So, you know, I get a lot of ideas from nonfiction that I read. So yeah, I love reading nonfiction and I love doing research. Do you think you're ever going to write a nonfiction book of yours? Do you like yourself? I don't know. I mean, I like to read it. I mean, I'm really not sure. I dropped out of a graduate program to get a PhD in anthropology and I was really excited to do the research for that. But now that I've been writing fiction for so long, there's something about fiction that, I mean, it's obviously not nonfiction. So what I love about research is following interesting ideas and facts basically that I'm interested in, like just things that inspire me. Like I don't have to find things out in particular necessarily. So I can follow my interests where they go and that informs the kind of fictional story that I want to tell. Whereas if I were writing a nonfiction book, I would have to research certain facts, you know, I have to like stick to some stuff that would, and so I think I like the free flowing nature of research for fictional, for fiction. I mean, there are some things I definitely had to look up, but it's not like I have to prove myself because you have poetic license. So I get to have a lot of fun with my research and just follow little rabbit holes, wherever they may lead. Oh yeah, like thank goodness for the historical fiction genre, right? Yes, yes, I love that. Yeah, it's so fun to see how people lived in different times and and it's fun to imagine that, you know, I think that's really interesting. So in all this research and going down rabbit holes, I love that you included different members of Lily's family and their backstories throughout the novel. I thought that was a really interesting point of engagement. And I'm wondering who was your favorite family member to flush out their history and their story? Oh, wow. Well, you know, okay, so my favorite family member was definitely on Judy. I love her. She is really, she was really inspired by this woman named Helen Ling, who was one of the first women, first Chinese American women to work at JPL. But, you know, that was fun to research. But honestly, the most fun research I had while writing the adult storylines was the research I did for Lily's mom, Grace, because I got to read some San Francisco Chronicles from the 1930s, you know, I got to kind of figure out what the city would look like during this. There's this one scene that takes place when Madam Chiang Kai-shek visits San Francisco. So I got to find all those original newspaper clippings and look at the photos and kind of imagine what her visit would have been because it was a huge event. I mean, the city had a massive parade for her. And Grace is part of that. And so, so was Lily as a child because basically all the Chinese Americans in San Francisco turned out to welcome Madam Chiang Kai-shek. So that was really fascinating to read about. And I did enjoy that research. And I could feel myself getting pulled down the rabbit hole there. And I had to stop myself because I didn't actually need to know every single last detail about her visit. But that part in the book is so beautifully detailed that I felt like I was there. And then as a result, I went down a rabbit hole and was like, oh, what did this look like? It's an incredible and there were there were amazing photos of it because it was such a huge deal. So it was everywhere. Yeah, that was really fun to research. Yeah. And Aunt Judy was my favorite second character. Like throughout the book, I have these little like notes that like go on JJ. I love that. I love that. Yeah, no, I was team on Judy the whole way through. But bringing up Grace's mom, not Grace's mom, Lily's mom, Grace. There's this part where Grace is expressing this longing for a people that she knows ethnically, but not culturally. And I found it was such an elegant tie in to how finding your sexuality can potentially feel. And I was wondering when you were writing this book, were you thinking of aha moments like that, or did that just was it all organic? Okay, so that didn't come to that didn't occur to me, but that's wonderful. I think it is a very, it's a very good parallel. I mean, the thing is, I'm a very instinctive writer. So I kind of, I kind of write what I write. And I don't always, I very rarely understand at first why I wrote something. And it is during the editorial process that my editor is very talented. He reads what I wrote. And he, he kind of explains to me what it's about sometimes. Like he'll have these comments and, and he'll say things like note this, this is important, it comes up later. And it is through conversations with him and through the editorial process that I come to understand these kinds of themes. So I did not notice that. Maybe he did though. I don't know. I mean, I yeah, it's, it's a really interesting thing because so much comes out of my subconscious when I'm writing. And I think it's better that I don't consciously try to make a theme happen. You know, I do think it feels more naturalistic if it just emerges through the writing process. And then once I understand that that's what I've done, like by talking to my editor, then I go through and make it clearer and tie things together more directly. Solid plan, solid plan. I can't really do it the other way anyway. So it sounds like a plan, but really it's the only way I can do it. Well, it is like the happiest of happy accidents as Bob Ross says, I believe. That's great. Another aha moment that I had at least was there was this backdrop of the Red Scare and this impossibility of depression for so many Chinese Americans was incredibly prevalent. And I thought it was interesting that Lily's friend Shirley was willing to risk her and her family's status in America to be with Calvin, but she drew a hard line, a super hard line when it came to Lily's homosexuality. Yeah. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that dynamic. Well, I wanted Lily and Shirley to kind of both have a first love at the same time. And both of those experiences make them do extremely unwise things, right? Like Lily should not be sneaking out and going to this gay bar in the middle of the night. I mean, she's underage. She can't, she's totally breaking the law. And it's, it's very dangerous for her to do this. But she doesn't really think of it that way because she's 17 and she doesn't really understand the consequences that are possible. And Shirley at the same time is falling in love with this, this young man, Calvin. And she also doesn't fully understand the consequences of that relationship. I think Shirley doesn't quite understand it because she's an American citizen. Like she was born in this country. Like she knows that this is a problem. Like she knows that Chinese Americans are being harassed and potentially deported. But when you're a young person, you often think that's going to happen to me, right? And I wanted to show that even though Shirley doesn't understand or accept Lily's relationship with calf, Shirley is having the same experience that Lily is having just on a different plane in a way, in a different, you know, in a different category of experience. But it's, it's, it's kind of the same thing. They're both doing incredibly reckless things as 17 year olds falling in love for the first time. And so that's, so that's a little bit about, about them and why I did that. Because when I was going through that scene, I was like, you know what, Shirley, I am, I am not a fan of you right now. My girl Lily a little hard. Yeah. Out of the two, which one was your favorite one to write? Or do you have like no favorite between them? My favorite between my favorite character to write was Lana. I don't, Lily and Shirley, their relationship is really very strange in a lot of ways. And that was difficult for me to write. But you know, I, I drew on like, you know, a lot of people have been in this situation where when you're a kid and you're growing up in a community and you're best friends with someone since you're like five years old, because you're just there, right there, there and you grow up together and you're still best friends, but you become kind of, you grow apart, but you're still best friends because you always have been and you're still in the same community. So I kind of drew on that experience for the relationship between Lily and Shirley. And it was, it was difficult to write because it wasn't fun. And I know that a lot of people don't like Shirley, but you know, I still sympathize with her. I have to, I have to have empathy for all of my characters, no matter how bad they are. I will admit, I was rooting for Shirley at the beginning. I was like, oh, she's a solid friend. She's going to do great things. And then I was like, dang it, Shirley, let me down, girls. Yeah, but they have totally different goals in life. And I don't think that it would be possible for Shirley to be an ally to Lily at that time in her life. Maybe later. I don't know. I would like to think that Shirley got over it and like, came to understand things more, but I'm not entirely sure that she does. So sorry. Trats. I thought it was so cool that there's Lily and Shirley's friendship going on. And as you were saying, like when you grow up with someone, you're like, all right, that's my friend, that's, that's my homie, like I'm stuck with this person, like we're always going to be together. But it also reminds me of how first love functions in that first friendship situation. And I love that Lily and Shirley are going on like this roller coaster of like, are we going to be friends? Are we not going to be friends? Like, where is this going? And I thought that was such a fantastic kind of parallel between like first love and first friendship. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's see. Another question that I had was Lily is definitely going to be one of my favorite teenage characters, just because she is so entirely relatable. She has these moments of meekness, like when she goes into Shirley's demands, and then she like pops up with these moments of such insane strength. Like when she's talking about her plans for her future, when she's like defending Kath, and I was like, you go, Lily. How important to you was it to show Lily's progress as she settles into herself? Well, I think that's, that's, that's her whole story, right? I think the relationship with Shirley is difficult for her because they've always had this one dynamic where Shirley is the leader, essentially, and Lily follows along. So when she start embarks on this relationship with Kath, you know, it's different and she, it affects the way that she is in all relationships of her life. And that's the journey she takes in this novel. And um, yeah, I don't know where I'm going now. I actually don't know where that question was going myself. Yeah, there we go. Okay, next. So the amount of research, and I wanted to shift away from the research questions for a moment, but we're going to hop back into them. I took a digital stroll through the History Center archives at SFPL. And I think I found the news article that you base the teenage girls recruited at Sex Deviate Bar news article on. And I'm wondering what was it like for you to find those articles? And then kind of changing how the actual event ended to something softer. Looking back at your novel after reading it, I feel like and correct me if I'm totally wrong that you attempted to give a happier and more deserving ending to the parties involved. Well, okay, so finding the articles was incredible because I did not realize how tabloid-y they were. Like the examiner, the San Francisco call, the chronicle of the time, the way they wrote about these bar raids were so salacious and so homophobic, incredibly homophobic, and also incredibly sexist. Like the way the newspapers wrote about women and queer people was horrendous in the 1950s. So that was amazing and eye-opening. And it was, yeah, it was very eye-opening to me. I, so the way I fictionalized it for this book was I basically didn't follow through with what happens long after the bar raid. So early, very, very early planning for this novel included a trial which continued to follow the course of what really happened. But I didn't do that because that wasn't the story that needed to be told here. It would have been a completely different book and it wouldn't have worked. So I'm not sure that I actually made it any better than what actually happened in reality. I just didn't really, I just didn't go into it because I haven't explained what happens to the other people involved in the raid. And you can, I think the reader can have their imagination about that. I just, in reality, it did not turn out well, you know. And there was a raid on a bar called Tommy's Place, which is what this is, this bar raid primarily was based on. The bartender, Grace Miller, was in prison. And I think recently the SFPL did an Instagram series of posts and they had accessed Grace Miller's papers, which was incredible. I hadn't, I hadn't seen them. And it was amazing to see her papers because she was really done wrong. Like I, she, she had to pay for stuff that it was not her fault. There was, it was a terrible situation. And the person who owned Tommy's 299 was a lesbian called Tommy Vasu. And ultimately Tommy Vasu was also sent to prison and died in prison. I don't know if it didn't happen to me, but that is also a fascinating true crime mystery that I will not, I don't know why Tommy was arrested again later that, I mean, they, they were involved in drugs, I think. But it was a, I mean, this is all this, this bar and the community, many of the bars at the time were kind of on the edge of legality and crime did happen in them. But it's also difficult to tell how much was actual crime and how much was salaciousness blown up by the newspaper. You know what I mean? Because it was just such a homophobic time. And they wrote up and being gay was, was a crime at that point. So anyway, yeah, I want someone to write a true crime novel about Tommy Vasu. That's what I want. I want to read that book. Yes, I want to read that book too. Because when I was digging through that, I was like, wait, no, this is a cold case. Can we get, can we get people on this? Tommy was murdered. It's true. It was a cold, I don't know. Anyway, somebody listening, you can go investigate this. It's, it's, it's such an interesting part of history and we don't know what happened. It's something we need to know. Like I need to know from my own piece of mind insanity. But I always think it's so crazy how I grew up in San Francisco, lived here my whole life. And I always find it so hard to understand that San Francisco once did have an incredibly homophobic past, especially because I know that as a port city, a lot of people were kicked off the boats at during like, going off to war for being allegedly gay or what have you. And just reading through this novel really kind of cemented how dangerous it used to be, to be gay in San Francisco. And I was wondering, have you ever encountered that feeling yourself where you think like a place is really welcoming and cheerful and happy, and you think something's going to go one way, and then you discover like this twisted dark history about it? Well, so San Francisco is an interesting place because even though it was illegal to be gay and you cross-dressing, definitely illegal for a long time. And you could get arrested for it and it wasn't safe. At the same time, there was this thriving underground queer community. And like a lot of like sex tourism, like people would come to San Francisco to visit these gay bars. And everybody in the 50s and in the 40s, they knew San Francisco was a gay mecca. Like it was already known as that. So there's this really interesting contrast, right? Like publicly, it's illegal. But privately and even not privately, everyone knew San Francisco had this reputation. So it's a really weird combination of factors that are in play at this point in time in San Francisco. I have, I came out in the 90s and, you know, I've been to some sketchy gay bars, but I have never truly felt unsafe in a gay bar. I have sometimes not wanted to, I have not come out in some situations in states that are in red states when I'm doing events or when traveling. I have kind of kept a low profile at times because, you know, as, first of all, as a woman, every woman knows there are places that just give you that little feeling of this is not okay here. And, you know, as a gay woman and as an Asian American woman, you kind of have this sense when places are not quite right. So I try to avoid those places. Let's be real. I try to avoid them. So it, I mean, but I have, I've had experience that it's not fun and, but when you find a gay bar in those places, the gay bar usually feels fine. Because it's, you know, I trust the gay people. Oh, yeah. This question might come off a little confrontational and I don't mean it to. I just didn't know how to word it correctly. I was wondering if you could expand on why Lily's looking and respecting the female form is coded as respectful while the men throughout the novel are kind of noted as leering or gross or vastly inappropriate. Oh, yeah. So this is a thing that happens at multiple times in the book. So the story is about Lily's journey to understanding who she is as a lesbian. And one thing that is difficult when you're coming out is acknowledging your desire, your attraction to people of the same sex. And a lot of the time, this is how I feel I felt also, you were free to look. You know, if you saw someone that you thought was attractive, you're kind of a scared to look at them. Because that indicated something about your sexual orientation that maybe you weren't ready to accept. And so this is Lily's journey trying to understand how to see women that she is attracted to and acknowledge that she's attracted to them. So that's her journey. And I think that that is quite a different journey, a different experience than the experience of mostly older straight men who are watching her as a young Asian American girl on the street or looking at other young women in various public places. So if you are a woman who has ever experienced straight harassment, you know, that's an experience that you can understand that is not, it's not okay. But because it carries a certain power dynamic involved, like the men who are doing this leering and catcalling believe that they have power over the women that they are ogling, right. And there, it's a threat. It's not really a compliment. It's a threat. And so that is why it's different than Lily coming to understand that when she sees Kat, she's attracted to her and thinks that she's, you know, someone that she wants to be with. That's a, it's a very different experience. Lily has no power over Kat for one thing. There's the power dynamic is completely different. And it's a, it's a very different experience, but you're right. The power of the gays and looking gays G A Z E and looking and seeing it's, it's a really specific thing. And it depends on who is doing the gazing and where the power lies. Yeah. I think it's interesting that you mentioned the power dynamic between Lily and Kat because there's the scene where Kat is getting Lily the fake ID and Lily is going through this whole like, Oh gosh, like, if I get caught with this, it's really going to be all bad. And Kat is like, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. It's all the time. It's fine. I was wondering. Oh, I forgot what my question was. Dang it. That was interesting because I, when I was writing that scene, I wanted to, I wanted to note that it is about a power difference in a way or it's about like a different status of identity. Like Kat doesn't, doesn't quite understand that if Lily is caught faking her identity, it has repercussions because of Lily's race. And the fact that so many Chinese Americans came to this country under false pretenses, under false papers, you know, so Lily is standing here holding false papers and she's like, Oh my God, I actually am an American, but here's a false identity. You know, to Lily, it's really a moment where she's, she's a little bit, she's afraid to do this. And Kat just doesn't, doesn't know. She doesn't know the history of Chinese immigration. They did not teach that in the 1950s. She just doesn't know. So she's well intentioned, but she doesn't understand Lily's hesitation in that moment. I remember now it was like the accidental racial power, power structure between Lily and Kat. Thank you for like catching that somewhere in that babble. That was a deliberate choice on my part. I definitely wanted to make that something that the reader could pick up on for sure. Yeah. Another scene that I thought was really interesting between Lily and Kat is when Lily brings her to Chinatown to get the ginger ice cream and she's excited and then she's slightly embarrassed about it. And I thought it was so interesting considering how open Lily was about showing Kat this book. And I thought like the separation between cultural identity and sexual identity for Lily at that moment was really interesting to kind of think about and play around within my own mind. And I was wondering for you personally, have you ever had to grapple with the difference between cultural and sexual identity? Oh, sure. There's always a little bit of a disconnect, I feel like. I grew up in a time when Asians were straight. You know what I mean? There are queer Asian Americans, obviously, but when I came out in the 90s, the Asian American community around me was very straight. So it didn't feel like it quite, it made me feel like I didn't quite fit in to that community. And it took a long time. I have friends who are queer Asians. So it just took a while to kind of have those two parts of my identity come together in a way. And sometimes I still see that separation. And it's often in situations like the one where Lily takes Kat to Chinatown to go to Fong Fong is when you're taking someone who's not Chinese into a Chinese space, and you can see them taking it in and they feel like it's different and maybe a little weird. And in those situations, I feel that separation quite, you know, I feel that separation. Yeah. And it's also, but you can see it when you bring straight people into a really queer space. You know, that happens too. Sometimes they look a little uncomfortable. So it can be a double whammy. Exactly. Exactly. I had so many questions and I feel like you hit on all of them just as we were talking. Let's see. Oh, I know that in early October, you have a companion novel. I mean, out, A Scatter a Light, I believe. And can you talk a little bit about that? Did you always intend to write a companion novel or did you find yourself wanting to tell more about Lily and Kat and I'm secretly hoping their families as well and how that impacted everyone they came in contact with this time past? Well, the weird thing about my fall book, it is called The Scatter of Light. I started writing it in 2013. So I wrote it well before I had any idea I was going to write last night at the Telegraph Club. And that book is about a totally different character than Lily and Kat. I mean, it's set in 2013. So it's set 60 years after Telegraph Club. And so when I first wrote it, it was a contemporary novel, a contemporary coming of age novel, and I couldn't sell it. Like no publishers wanted to publish it. So I thought it was dead in the water basically. And then later on, my editor that I worked with on Telegraph Club offered to buy it. And I was, I was really surprised, actually, I didn't, I really thought it was dead. But while I was working on Telegraph Club, I realized that it was connected to A Scatter of Light. And the two books do share some story arc kind of similarities, and some common themes, but they're quite different. So you will, in A Scatter of Light, you will find out more about Lily and Kat. You will. But it is a very different book. So Telegraph Club, I think of as a love story. And A Scatter of Light is not a love story. It is not a love story. Warning you from page one. It's not a love story. It is about, it is about coming of age. It is about messy first relationships. It is about the relationship between the main character, Arya. She's 18. It's the summer after high school. She spends the summer with her grandmother and artist in Marin County. It's about art. And it's, it's a complicated book. And I, I hope that people like it. And I know, I do believe they will like what they find out about Lily and Kat. Other than that, I hope they like the book too. At the end of the Telegraph Club, I was just like, what happened for the Lily and Kat? I really need to know, like, what was the rest of their life like? What did they do? What did they talk about? So I'm good authority that you will find out some of that. Oh my gosh, that, that makes my absolute day. Because I was like, I have to start writing fan fiction now. Like that's where you should do it. Right. I love fans. I don't read fan fiction about my own stuff, but you should write it. I give you all permission. Yes, I'm taking that. Okay. Um, let's see, we have about 15 minutes left. I was wondering if we should open it up to a Q&A. That would be great. Sure. Yeah, let's see some people chatting. I'm sorry. I'm never able to follow the chat when I do one of these things. Neither am I. I have to like look at it like the last second. I'm like, Oh, questions. Let's see. So from Penelope, we have what was your favorite part of researching last night at the Telegraph Club? Was there a specific area slash topic you found really compelling or fun to research? Well, I did love researching all the the bar history. I thought that was really fascinating. Partly because when I was living in San Francisco in the early 2000s, I went to a lot of gay bars. So it was really fun to learn about the community that as it existed before I was there. And I enjoyed doing some archival research. I did come to the San Francisco Public Library to your history center. Yeah. And I looked at the Galileo High School yearbooks, which was really fun to see these 1950s teenagers. That was really eyeopening because I realized when I saw the pictures of these students that I had envisioned in my head, the 1950s was a very white time, which but it wasn't. It's just that's what's on like leave it to be there. There were people of color in the 1950s. And when I looked at this yearbook, it was really incredible because I think a third of the class of the third of the high school classes at this time were Asian American and a third were black. And it was I did not know that. And so that was really interesting to see. And it was also so fun to see all the Asian students in these like 1950s out because you never see that in popular culture like that never happens. So I did enjoy seeing those photos and the San Francisco Public Library has you all know you should all know this. There's an amazing historical photo collection. And you can, I loved doing the photo research, like looking at the pictures of the city in the 50s and trying to find specific blocks and locations. That was really, really fun. I was wondering, did you ever go to Galileo? Because I went there. Yeah, I didn't go inside. I just walked around and like looked at it because it wasn't going to go into it. Because I briefly went to Galileo myself. Oh, you did? Yeah. And when you described the tunnel, I was like, oh, she's been here, been here. I did my research. I was so excited when I found out about that tunnel. And I, yeah, I imagined it. I hope that it was correct. It was correct, which is why I was like, okay, she like was serious about this research. Yay, I'm so excited. Awesome. Let's see. Another question that we have is, I was curious as to why you included the Chinese language characters in the text. And that comes from a Lilly. Ah, hi, Lilly. So I wanted to have Chinese dialogue in the book because Lilly's bilingual. She speaks Cantonese at home. And her parents speak two different dialects of Chinese. Her mom speaks Cantonese and her dad speaks the Mandarin as well as Shanghainese. So the problem is when you have Chinese language in an English language book, you have to decide whether you're going to romanize it and how you're going to romanize it. So today, standard romanization of Mandarin is in Pinyin. But in the 1950s, Pinyin didn't exist. And Pinyin doesn't apply to Cantonese. So I was like, how am I going to do this? Because Cantonese, when it's romanized, like put in English letters, you can't tell what is happening. Like it doesn't, they don't look like real words to an English speaker. And I just didn't want to do that. So I realized, you know, what would look like a real language, Chinese characters. So I asked my editor if that would be okay, because I have not seen that before. I did see Chinese language translated in a footnote. I saw that in Crazy Rich Asians. And that's where I got the idea for footnotes from Crazy Rich Asians. And so I used Chinese characters so that I wouldn't have to romanize extensive dialogue in Cantonese and Mandarin. Because I just like that, I like that when you see the Chinese characters, you realize, oh, they're speaking Chinese. And if you want to know what they're saying, you can look at the footnote. Because when you see it romanize, sometimes you try to say it in your head. And it's just not going to work if you don't speak Chinese. It's going to be weird. So that's why I wanted to do the Chinese characters. But when they just, when they're speaking what I call Chinglish, you know, and they just have like one Chinese word in an English sentence, then I would romanize the word so that it's easier to read that one, that sentence. I thought about this a lot. That was probably more than I needed to know. No, I really like knowing it. I'm pretty sure probably Lily also like knowing it. Don't want to speak for you, Lily. Just throwing it out there. But I really enjoyed that aspect of the book, because I feel like sometimes when we're reading, we tend to like shift people into not who they are, but someone who we think they are. So seeing the Chinese characters was like, oh, wait, no, this is what I'm reading. So it kept it like centered in Chinatown for me. So I really appreciated that. And or else I will sit there for like 20 minutes being like, how can I say this beautifully? Exactly. So don't bother saying it. Yeah. No, thank goodness. Let's see. From Andrea, we have what do you think has changed from now and then about all those locations and queer spaces? Well, the queer community in the 1950s was the queer, the gay bars were largely centered on Broadway in North Beach. And now they're not. That's one major change. Like they're, I mean, they're in the cast or in the mission. And so it's the location of the bars has definitely moved. But you know, what was interesting when I was doing research on the book, I also read some transcripts of interviews that Nanelle Millaboy did for her book, Wide Open Town. And reading those transcripts showed me that the lesbians of the 1950s talked about the same stuff that my community did. Like they, they all have gossip, like relationship drama, like like basic dyke drama. It was the same. They had the same stuff they were talking about in the 50s. And so that was really interesting because it made me realize that the world changes. But people, people really have a lot of the same experiences across generations, I think. I did think it was really cool when Lily and Kath were at the club and, ah, I'm blanking on the other couple's name that they were there with. But she was like, oh yeah. Yeah, she's a baby butch. And I was like, oh, that's exactly what's said today. And I was like, that's so, it's so modern, but I guess it's just so, it is how it's been through time internals. I think it is how it has been through time eternal. I agree. Let's see. All right. Penelope has a two-part question that I really like. She says she loves all the food scenes. And was there a favorite food you included in the story? And how did food help you connect the characters to their heritage? And did you draw on your own experience of food and cultural identity? Well, the one, there was, it's interesting because this, this short story, I mean, this novel started as a short story called New Year and it was centered on Chinese New Year. So there, there was always a Chinese New Year banquet in the story. And when I wrote the short story, I didn't do too much research into that because it was a short story. And I was like, I eat Chinese food. I know what they eat. And then I wrote the novel and I realized, oh my God, I have to make this Chinese New Year food historically accurate. So I had to research that. And the funny, one of the funny ways I researched it is I asked my parents what they would have eaten for Chinese New Year in the 1950s, because they were in China at the time. So it might have been different, but I had to get an idea of what was eaten in Guangzhou, in Southern China, in Canton. And then I had to figure out if they would eat that in America. Like would they have the actual ingredients in San Francisco to make that? And so it was, it was really interesting. I, you know, I didn't, my favorite Chinese foods were not in this book. But I like all the food that's in this book. So there's that. Chinese food has so many different regional specialties. And it's fascinating. And I actually wrote my, my master's thesis on Chinese food in America, Chinese cookbooks. So I could go on about this for quite a while. But yeah, I felt like it was very important that I'd be accurate to Lily's family, especially for that New Year scene, because New Year is a holiday, like Christmas and Easter, where families tend to eat the same thing. Like it's a tradition, right? You always have the same food at this holiday. So I wanted to make sure that it would be accurate for her family and the time period. I really liked when Lily, not Lily. Yeah, no, Lily and Shirley go to Sutro and they're talking about like Chinese food is so great. Like why would you want to eat American food all the time? And I was like, points were made, points were made here and now. I enjoyed that scene because they were friendly at that. That scene was a good scene for them. That was a fun scene. Yeah. And I was like, oh, food, connection, like, come on, let's bring it back to friendship. And then I think we have time for one more question. And it's going to be from Angela. And she asked, what does your writing process look like? Oh, well, my writing process is different for every book, as every author will say. And it, you know, it takes years for me to write a novel. So it also changes according to what part of the novel I'm, or to what stage of the novel writing process I'm in. So when I'm writing a rough draft, like the first draft of the book, I do have a kind of a thing I always do. First of all, I quit Twitter. I quit Twitter for like months now while I'm writing the first draft. And then I, I'm a morning person. So I, before I write, I always meditate. And then I write in the morning. And I have this goal where when I'm writing the first draft, I have to get down 1000 words a day. And when I get to 1000 words, I stop. So sometimes this takes me like half an hour. And then sometimes it takes me like eight hours. It's terrible. But I, I make myself get to 1000 words. Like sometimes I do a little bit more, but I try to not do too much more because I've noticed that if I write a lot more, if I feel like I'm super inspired and I write a lot more, I can't write the next day. Like the number of words I can do is somehow limited. So if I spew out a bunch of them on one day, the number goes down the next day. And then I kind of lose momentum. So I try to do 1000 words a day. And then for the, that's the first draft. So once that's done, it's going to be in revision and I'll be, I'll be in revision for years. Sometimes like, I think I was revising this book for two and a half years. So when I revise, I can write for longer. So usually I'll try to work all day, but I have to schedule in time to do author stuff, like emails, but I always try to write in the morning. So my brain is clearer than, so I'm usually working on the book in the morning during revision, at the very least. And sometimes I'll do all day, but you know, definitely in the morning. A thousand words sounds like so many words to me. How many like pages is that? Oh, it's not very many. It's like, it's like, if there's like 250 words a page. So that's like four pages. Ah, okay. Double spaced. Oh, okay. It's, I haven't been in school for a minute. So I was like a thousand words. It's not that much. Yeah. I have author friends who will do like six to 10,000 words a day. And I have no idea how they do that. I, but that's fine. You know, not everybody writes at the same pace. And as a writer, one thing you have to do is figure out what your own pace is and what works for you. So don't feel like you have to do a thousand words a day. You don't have to. Yeah, I was like, I can manage 250, like a nice little tweet a day. Like I got it. That's totally fine. It's still moving forward. The trick is to keep moving forward when you're in the drafting process, because it's very easy to quit. You just got to keep going. So you get to the end. Let's see. So I think, I think that's time for us. We reached the end. It has been so absolutely fantastic to have you here. And this is actually my first like author talk. So I am so, so incredibly happy I got to be with you. And I want to thank everyone in the chat, everyone who is behind the scenes, getting this together. You are all like total rock stars for this. Yeah. Thank you so much, Rachel. And thank you to everyone at the San Francisco Public Library for putting this together. It's been great. And for all the questions and everyone who came, this is wonderful. Thank you so much. Now is the awkward part where I don't know when I just sit here.