My first book BY LILY QUAN
U
p on my computer screen is the cover of my me. She lived in Toronto. She talked about her life, first book. It comes out in February 2022. I her friends, and above all, her family. I immediately can’t stop looking at it. The title is in big bright wrote everything down and began my second novel, letters. The main character strikes an attitudinal set in her world. This meant I had to leave behind my pose. The drawings and sketches will surely beloved first novel and historical Chicago. catch people’s attention. But to me, It was tough to let go but necessary. the most important feature is right What I didn’t know then was that at the bottom. In small letters Disney and Pixar were working are the words By Lily Quan. on Turning Red, a feature-length Then I actually wrote my first book when I was in the first grade. I was both author and illustrator. The plot featured three sisters who had a Big Mac Attack. Each sister had long hair in a different colour. I was so proud of my story. I stapled the pages together in book form and showed it to my mother, who told me she liked it.
one evening, the voice of a snarky, precocious thirteen-yearold Chinese-Canadian girl came to me.
Then one afternoon I was home with a bad cold and needed to blow my nose. There weren’t any tissues nearby, so I reached for my book because it was handy. Scads of clear snot dripped down the sisters’ bodies. It didn’t bother me to use my book this way. This meant my book was special; it was multifunctional. The journey to publication as an adult has taken a lot longer with plenty of snot-worthy moments. It’s tough to get published. Over the years, I wondered if it was worth it to pursue writing. For several years, I worked on an ambitious historical fiction manuscript. The book was my passion. I got an arts grant for it and did a research trip to Chicago. Despite hundreds of queries, it was never published. Meanwhile Twitter and Facebook became the media of choice and readers lost interest in writing with more than 140 characters. The thought occurred to me that by the time I wrote a second novel, people might not be interested in books at all. Then one evening, the voice of a snarky, precocious thirteen-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl came to 10
wordworks | 2022 Volume I
animated film about a thirteenyear-old Chinese-Canadian girl, directed by Oscarwinner Domee Shi. When they found out I had written something in a similar vein, they thought I might be a good fit to write an adaptation of the movie in book form. That’s the book I am looking at now.
It took a lot of luck and perseverance to reach this point, and I needed both to get here. I can’t say that I would recommend a writing career. It’s an uncertain field where you make a lot of sacrifices for your work. An old friend congratulated me on the book and said I had obviously chosen the right career. I thought about it and replied, “Actually it chooses you, and then you make it work.” Afterward, I realized just how true that is. Lily Quan lives in Nanaimo. She wrote the middle grade book adaptation of the upcoming Pixar movie, Turning Red, directed by Domee Shi. The movie comes out March 2022.
