Yang Huang

How did you become a writer?

I took a long winding journey to become a writer. I first became an engineer, then an immigrant, and then returned to school to study literature and writing. Read my journey in "Why I Write in English." For me, being a writer is not a title but a responsibility. I became a writer because I had to express my authentic experience as an Asian American.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

When I was a child, I fell in love with Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. When I was in college, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro, Zora Neale Hurston, and John Gardner changed my life. Then as a fiction writer, I admired Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Ha Jin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elena Ferrante, Eileen Chang, and so many more.

English is my second language. My education was patchwork. People have mentioned that my novels remind them of the works by Barbara Kingsolver, Elena Ferrante, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Patricia Highsmith, and others. Then I rushed to read and learn from their great works.

When and where do you write?

Since I work as a computer engineer, and I have a family with children, I mostly write at night, on weekends and holidays. I cannot be picky about where I write. A desk behind a locked door is all I need. I call it going to my writing cave.

What are you working on now?

I have a new novel OASIS, currently looking for a home. It’s a story about two lovers being separated by the climate crisis—dust storms and desertification in northwest China. Kaier, the heroine, leaves her village, but her village never leaves her. She makes a courageous choice to go with her heart, which astonishes and gratifies me.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I have suffered from writer’s slowdown rather than block. I call it my “fallow” period. No one expects the land, even fertile soil, to bear crops all year long, so why should a writer be productive every day? There is a time to sow seeds, thin seedlings, water and fertilize the plants, finally harvest and process the crops. A writer’s work is cyclical, like farming.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t rely on symbolism; it is a crutch. Describe and reveal your character like a real person, someone like yourself.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read good and enduring books, including the classics, books by minority writers, and literature in translation. Keep writing; don’t give up. Remember: only a born artist can endure the labor of becoming one.

Tom Zoellner

How did you become a writer?

I started as a reporter and worked for a decade at a series of local daily newspapers. The pay was low, but the exposure to all levels of American society was high. I learned how to sit and listen, how to ask questions that elicit answers, how to not take no for an answer, how to write fast and not fear a blinking cursor.

 Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I remain awed and humbled by a school of midcentury regionalism; writers like George Rippey Stewart, Zora Neale Hurston, John Gunther, Mary Austin, Wallace Stegner, Richard Rhodes, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the anonymous authors of the 1940s WPA Guides. They knew how to synthesize a pile of facts into supple narratives. Places have as much personality as people.

When and where do you write? 

In a spare bedroom in my house, on a desk purchased from a Kmart in West Lebanon, New Hampshire when I was in graduate school. I aim for 1,000 words a day, per the advice of Carolyn See, typically in the mornings. It's a formula that works.

What are you working on now?

A collection of essays about my home state of Arizona. Regionalism again. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No -- that's an invention. Ignore it. Just start writing, not worrying about quality, and your path will become clear. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Other than the aforementioned 1,000 words a day, every day, and the forsaking of quality in favor of production, it would be an image from Stephen King's "On Writing," in which he compares the act to paleontology -- the exhumation of a dinosaur bone in the subconscious that was always there. You didn't so much create it as unearth it. All you need to do is show up and start digging to find the writing that you've already done. This provides enormous relief, and disproves writer's block.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Understand you'll have to make it an annex of your life rather than the center. We all have to cobble together a living. Don't listen to those who say that teaching is a distraction -- that's a fiction on the level of writer's block. If you set the alarm two hours earlier than you otherwise might, and stay faithful to the thousand-word benchmark, your success at producing a manuscript within six months is as guaranteed as a law of physics. Then it becomes a matter of perseverance. Rejection is normal. Keep submitting. And also understand that the real rewards do not come from publication, money or honors. The best compensation is in the pure act of discovery.

Tom Zoellner teaches at Chapman University and Dartmouth College, and serves as the politics editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the author of eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction for 2020.

Catherine Dang

How did you become a writer?

My parents owned a liquor store when I was a kid, and occasionally my sister and I were stuck there. We did our homework and read books in the backroom, but I’d get bored. That was when I started writing short stories in a notebook. They were often about shows that I wished I was watching instead.

I was a pragmatic kid. Writing never seemed like a “real” career. I figured I was supposed to do something more realistic, like law. Since my family never had much money, I wanted to change that in my own future.

I botched those plans in college, though. I told myself that I was only taking fiction and screenwriting classes for “fun.” But I think a part of me just wanted to test the waters. I wanted to see how my writing stacked up to my peers. I wanted to see if I could commit to writing whole projects. I started with poems, then short stories. Then I finished an entire two-hour screenplay for my thesis. And I understood that I was a decent writer.

I knew I was going to regret it if I didn’t take writing seriously. I wanted to give myself at least one chance to fail. So right after graduation, I started work on the manuscript that would become Nice Girls. I also entered the workforce. I got a day job, I hated the day job, and then I left the day job in 10 months. That experience changed my life, though. It made me desperate enough to finish Nice Girls. It kept me disciplined enough to edit the manuscript. And I began querying agents right after. Slowly, things took off from there.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I was a "Reading Rainbow" kid. LeVar Burton told stories in such a captivating way—he made me want to read everything. I also watched a lot of anime and true crime in childhood, then movies as a teenager. I think all those experiences taught me the mechanics of a good story.

Judy Blume and Sylvia Plath are probably the two biggest influences in my own fiction writing. Their novels felt so honest and confessional, and I happened to read them at the right times in my life. They resonated with me deeply. Blume gave me comfort, and Plath seemed to understand me. I’ve always wanted my own writing to have that same undercurrent of honest emotion. It doesn’t matter how light or brutal the feeling—it just has to feel real.

I also admire distinct prose. I love Sally Rooney, Ocean Vuong, and Haruki Murakami. Their prose is sparse and delves into the mundane (Murakami loves his food descriptions!), but they know how to pack an emotional punch. On the other hand, I’ve also been struck by Cormac McCarthy’s and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ prose. I read The Road and Between the World and Me in two entirely different summers. But the writing had the same kind of magic: just beautiful, elegant, winding prose about some of the most painful, brutal things. Their writing lingers.

I’m someone who gets influenced by a little of everything—music, articles, the way people talk. I even get impressed by memes.

When and where do you write?

I usually write in the mornings at home. But when I’m in a slump, I like to go to a coffee shop and pretend that I’m as productive as the people around me.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on my next novel. I told myself it would be lighter. So far, it’s…bloodier.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

It hits me fairly often. For me, writer’s block can happen for a multitude of reasons: I’m bored, I’m not inspired, something in the book feels “off.” If I’m feeling really stubborn, I’ll keep chipping away at the writing. Sometimes a good run or exercise helps get rid of the block. Other times, I get out of that funk by consuming other stories, whether it’s reading a book or watching a movie. I like experiencing someone else’s creation—it motivates me to get back into my own work. And honestly, some of the best writing comes after the writer’s block.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

The one Nike ad: “Yesterday you said tomorrow.”

What’s your advice to new writers?

Talent is good; resolve is better.

Catherine Dang is a former legal assistant based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. Nice Girls is her first novel.