Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to the author of Win Me Something, Kyle Lucia Wu.
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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Kyle Lucia Wu: It’s a mad blur of Sweet Valley High, Nancy Drew, and The Babysitters Club.
BM: Favorite re-read?
KLW: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin.
BM: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with?
KLW: I think my book would feel very seen by, and want to befriend, Brandon Taylor’s Real Life.
BM: A book that blew your mind?
KLW: Patricia Smith’s Incendiary Art.
BM: Last book you read?
KLW: Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So, with reverence.
BM: A book that made you cry?
KLW: Too many to name! Rose by Li-Young Lee always makes me weep; What the Living Do by Marie Howe left me inconsolable for hours; and Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung eviscerated me.
BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?
KLW: Milk, Blood, Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz was masterful and great fun to read. Strip by Jessica Abughattas was a rare combination of sexy, intelligent, and precise.
BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?
KLW: Problems by Jade Sharma.
BM: What’s one book you wish you had read during your teenage years?
KLW: I would have wrapped my arms so tightly around Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden!
BM: Favorite book to give as a gift?
KLW: The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
KLW: It’s not unheard of, but I hadn’t heard of Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami before coming across it at Green Apple Books in San Francisco and falling in love.
BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?
KLW: Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
KLW: The Shimmering State by Meredith Westgate needs to be adapted immediately and beamed into my eyeballs.
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Kyle Lucia Wu has received the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Margins Fellowship and residencies from Millay Arts, The Byrdcliffe Colony, Plympton’s Writing Downtown Residency, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is the Programs & Communications Director at Kundiman and has taught creative writing at Fordham University and The New School. Win Me Something is her debut novel. She lives in New York City.
Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something is out now from Tin House Books
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