Abigail Hing Wen was born in West Virginia and raised in Ohio as a child of immigrant parents, both of Chinese descent. While she began to write creatively and tell stories from a young age, she studied what was seen as more “practical” subjects, graduating from Harvard University and Columbia Law School and then going on to work in Washington DC for the Senate and as a law clerk for a federal judge. She later earned her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She now works in Silicon Valley in venture capital, artificial intelligence, and of course, writing novels, intuitively choosing to pursue multiple passions. Her debut book, Loveboat, Taipei, is coming out on January 7th and is a fictional story for young adult readers based off of her own memories of attending Chien Tan, a language immersion program for teens in Taiwan, but is more infamously known as “Loveboat.”

In this conversation, Abigail and I not only got into to process of how she wrote this wonderful book, but we connected on so many levels- as dancers, creative & intuitive thinkers, and musical lovers. We explored how she has felt the calling to write her whole life, the on-going balancing act of juggling her intensive jobs, writing career & family life, why she had to write her book in full four different times, how her MFA program created a community around writing, how we each define creative freedom, and so much more.

See the show notes for this episode at rubyjosephine.com