I didn't see myself in any books at all
when I was a kid
When you're not in a book or on TV
you feel like you don't exist and I know
from experience that you feel like
you're not important but if you see
yourself whether you're Chinese or Asian
or you're marginalised, maybe you're LGBT
if you don't see those people
then, you know, you feel
bad about yourself and I want people to
not feel like that
We want more representation and good representation
I started writing in 2006 or 2007 and I
started writing short stories for adults
I knew I wanted to be a writer but I
didn't realise I wanted to be a
children's author until around 2016
and I just absolutely love writing for children
The stories are really fun but also
there's a lot of hope in children's
literature and you feel like you're
making a difference because
you're hoping to like influence the next
generation and like shape their minds so
it feels quite important for me to be a children’s author
My first novel was called Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths
and it was shortlisted for the Blue Peter book award
and it just won the Jhalak Children and YA Prize
which I'm really happy about
I did some
school visits around Danny Chung’s launch
and there was one class that had
about six British Chinese or mixed Chinese pupils
and I did my whole talk about Danny Chung
and then they come up ‘I'm Chinese too’
and that was just like heartwarming
because they wanted me to know that they
were just like Danny and like me and so I think that was really nice
I often write notes
and ideas into notebooks and I used to
journal quite a lot and I find that if
I’m stuck with writing journaling
actually is really helpful
and here I found some notes about Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths
and I talk about Danny and nainai
and then I found here that there's a note about a Chinese goddess
and my second book Lizzie Chu has got
this goddess in it so
I think sometimes you just need to splurge and get all these ideas out
So Keep Dancing Lizzie Chu’s my new novel
and it's about a girl who looks after
her grandfather but he's acting quite strange
I was a young adult carer in my early
twenties so one of the the themes in the
book is being a young carer and
Lizzie doesn't know that she's a young
carer she just does it because there's
no one else to do it and that was the
same as me
and so in the book
she goes on a journey of discovery and
she's like, ‘oh actually I can ask for
help at the end of the book’
So it’s kind of, I was using connections that I have seen in real life
My parents Jean and Ron fostered Chinese kids but I
ended up staying so I was adopted by
Jean and Ron when I was eight
I became a young adult carer around 2002
my mum had two hip operations that
didn't go very well so then she was kind
of wheelchair-bound
and at the same time my dad had
clinical depression so he would be
probably six months in a psychiatric unit
and I would go and visit him every day
there, take him food
and then after my mum passed away in 2003
my dad had like lots of stuff going on
Parkinson's, dementia
diabetes and so
every year I was looking after him and
dealing with his carers
doing his shopping every week and
dealing with his bills and stuff like
that so it's quite a lot to deal with
and sometimes
I couldn't work, I just was a bit
depressed you know it kind of affected
my social life
So yeah it was, you know, not easy being a young person and doing all that stuff
So we came to Scotland in 2017
My husband got a job here and a week after
we moved I remember being at Loch Lomond
for the first time and when I got home
Ii got a call saying my dad had passed away
It was quite a tough year you know
being in a different place not having my
friends around
I'd looked after him for nearly 20 years
I was basically managing his life
and so it freed up that space to do other things and be creative
So I’ve got my book launch for Keep Dancing Lizzie Chu
which is an in person book launch at Waterstones
I’m really excited because my friends and family
and writer friends can come out and
celebrate the launch
which I wasn't able to have before
because of the lockdown and the pandemic
So I'm really happy that I can celebrate my book in real life
So this is my first book launch we're at
Waterstones, Argyle Street in Glasgow and
last year I didn't have an in-person
book launch because of the pandemic so
I'm really excited to have my friends
here. my family here. lots of bookish people are here
I’m part of a East Asian writers group in Glasgow and so some of
them are here and I'm meeting some of
them for the first time because a lot of
it's been online or on WhatsApp so it's really great to meet people in real life
Well why don't you kick us off by doing a reading
Yeah so this is my new book Keep Dancing Lizzie Chu
Just going to borrow the Waterstones version
So it came out last week
and I'm going to just read the first chapter
Most Saturdays are generally uneventful
a chore even
apart from watching Strictly Come Dancing
But not this Saturday, no this Saturday
waigong nearly got his head knocked
off by a single decker bus
the number four to be precise
It was one of those eco buses that you
can't hear coming
The headline would have been ‘death by
silent yet deadly bus’
Luckily for both of us
I saved his life because that's the kind
of granddaughter I am
It's been me and waigong since last year
when my grandma passed away and I wasn't
about to lose him too
I like to keep busy
it stopped me from getting too down in the dumps
I really missed my gran
she'd been a mother, a good friend, and a
grandma rolled into one
Now it was just me and my waigong
trying to take it one day at a time
That’s beginning
There's about 300,000 young carers that
are children
that are cleaning their parents that are
going shopping and we don't hear about
them and so in the back of the book there’s
there's some websites and stuff that if
someone's reading it and they're like, ‘oh
actually Lizzie’s a bit like me’
They can maybe get some help so that was one of the reasons why I wrote it
I am proud
I always get nervous before a book comes out because
It’s, you've written it and you spent
time with it and then it's out in the
world and you can't do anything about it
so I always, I am proud, but I am nervous
as well how it's going to be received
I've just finished a Q&A
I've had some wine
signed some books and now it's time to chill out