I can't believe you have a Tumblr! I'm currently reading the hybrid chronicles and I'm smitten. Would you be OK with being tagged in Fanart of the characters?
Yes, of course! I love Fanart! :D

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@katzhangwriter
I can't believe you have a Tumblr! I'm currently reading the hybrid chronicles and I'm smitten. Would you be OK with being tagged in Fanart of the characters?
Yes, of course! I love Fanart! :D
Kat Zhang on Childhood, Summers in China and The Emperorâs Riddle
Contributed by Kat Zhang
Much like Mia, the 11-year-old heroine of The Emperorâs Riddle, I spent the summer between 6th and 7th grade visiting family in China. Unlike her, I didnât stumble across any ancient treasure! I did, however, draw upon a lot of my own experiences growing up to write The Emperorâs Riddle.
My parents immigrated to the United States only a few years before I was born, and trips back to China were a staple of my childhood summers. The scene in Riddle where Mia flips through old photobooks of her motherâs childhood pictures is pretty much pulled from my own eagerness as a kid to know more about my own parentsâ lives so very long ago. Their childhoods in 1960s China always seemed like another world, one so very removed from my own growing-up years in the US.
Keep reading
I wrote a little something for the CBC Diversity Book Blog about my newest book (and debut Middle Grade!), THE EMPERORâS RIDDLE :)
I'm so in love w the hybrid chronicles I read all of them in like a week you did an amazingly wonderful job w the books thank you for writing them â€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïž
Aww, thatâs so great to hear! Thanks so much :DÂ
Do you have anymore books in the works? The Hybrid Chronicles is AmAzInG, and I'd love to read more from you.
Thanks very much! Iâm really happy to hear you loved the Hybrid Chronicles :) My next book is actually releasing in a bit more than a week, on May 2, 2017. Itâs a middle grade novel called THE EMPERORâS RIDDLE. Iâll post the cover and description below :)
Mia Chen is on what her mother calls a Grand Adventure. Sheâs not sure what to make of this family trip to China, and didnât want to leave her friends for the summer, but sheâs excited about the prospect of exploring with her Aunt Lin, the only adult who truly understands her.
Then Aunt Lin disappears, right after her old nemesis, a man named Ying, comes to visit. Mia knows that years ago, when Aunt Lin and Ying were sent to the Fuzhou countryside to work as laborers, the two searched for an ancient treasure togetherâone that still hasnât been found. Sheâs suspicious that their shared history might be linked to Aunt Linâs disappearance.
When Mia discovers an old map filled with riddles in Aunt Linâs room, she quickly pieces together her mission: find the treasure, find her aunt. Now, Mia, along with her big brother, Jake, must solve the clues to rescue the person she knows best in the worldâand maybe unearth a treasure greater than her wildest dreams.
THE EMPERORâS RIDDLE is my first middle grade, and Iâm incredibly excited about it. If youâre looking for a pre-order link, hereâs one to Amazon!
Thanks again for your note :D
I learned I had OCD from watching Maury. At least, I think it was Maury. The mid-90s was the age of daytime talk shows, and now they have all blurred into my memory. What I do remember is this: I was eleven years old, and suddenly my entire world made sense.
Iâve heard that mental illness is often genetic. However, this wasnât the case for me. I was raised as an only child, and whenever I tried to articulate what I was feeling to my parents, I got the distinct impression that I was starting to sound insane, and that if I kept talking this way, I would be sent away. I thought I would decline and decline until any capacity for joy was gone from my mind.
I canât remember a time when I wasnât anxious about things that hadnât happened. I canât remember a day when I didnât believe I was going to die in some rare and violent way. When I was six, my parents were impressed that I had stopped asking for McDonalds as an after school treat, but the truth is that I believed all food that wasnât vacuum sealed was poisoned or crawling with toxic germs.
The numbers didnât begin until I was in fifth grade. Iâm not sure how exactly it started, but it had something to do with my bedroom window. One day, for no discernable reason, something told me that I had not closed the window properly. So I closed it again. But this time, when the window locked into the frame, something about the sound it made was not right. So I did it again. An itch manifested in my mind. Closing a window was no longer about closing a window. There was something bigger than me, and it was sitting on my shoulders, and it followed me even after I had walked away from the window.
Bit by bit, the entire world changed and morphed around this new Thing that followed me everywhere I went. This thing that taunted me mercilessly. It had no body, so I was its body. My hands were made to tap the walls and the tables and the windows a certain number of times. And if I didnât do it right (which I never did), I would have to do it again, until someone entered the room and my embarrassment won out over my fear, or I was too tired to remember this sequence I had now performed over a dozen times.
By the time I was twelve, I no longer remembered what a warm shower felt like. The bathroom tile had a chaotic pattern of little shapes that went in all directions, and I had to make sure my feet aligned with them in a certain way, and if they didnât, I had to do it again. And then again. The water was always cold by the time I set foot beneath it. Washing my hair was its own particular kind of hell.
Coincidentally, this was at the dawn of puberty, when I could blame the amount of time it took to shower and then get dressed on the fact that I was becoming a teenager. I pretended that I had suddenly become obsessed with fashion, that I had tried on a hundred different shirts and thatâs why I nearly missed the bus. The truth is that it had taken me all morning just to get both arms into the sleeve of one shirt, because this monster on my back was telling me that if I got it wrong, my house would catch fire and weâd all die in the flames.
It wasnât the kind of thing I talked about. Not in 1996. And especially not since my family was the religious sort, and I had been taught that this sort of thing only happened to people who had yet to atone for some great sin. I knew somehow that this wasnât that. I knew somehow that no one was going to understand. And I assumed I was the only person in the world to have contracted such a bizarre creature that had managed to zap me entirely of my will.
Then an episode of Maury (I think) featured sufferers of OCD. Mind you, this was long before the internet was a thing in my house. I had no way to contact this young woman who couldnât get out of bed unless the numbers on the clock were even. I had no way to say that I understood, that we shared this monster. I felt at once like I was not alone and the most alone Iâd ever been.
Even knowing this, I didnât tell my parents. I didnât think that they would understand. Instead, I told myself that I would be better. I knew what I had and it was just a matter of not doing it. This sounds excellent in theory but not so much when put into practice.
OCD latches on to its host. It locks around their brain like fingers in clay. The clay hardens, and thereâs a kind of permanence. Alone with this monster of mine, I began to observe it the same way it had observed me. I took notice of when it seemed to scream for my attention versus when it left me alone. It wanted my attention most of the time, but it got bored enough with me when I was writing my little stories in my notebook. It also seemed to leave me alone when I was blasting music from my Walkman. I guess it wasnât a big fan of Jewel.
For a while at least, I was able to tell stories of people who Were Not Me. I wasnât present, and therefore nothing that plagued me was present.
There were times, over the years, in which I tried to put what I was experiencing into my writing. It just never seemed to make sense on the page. Conclusion? Write about other things. Feel better for a while. Repeat.
By my late teens and early twenties, the OCD had calmed considerably. I credit this on the stability of my life at that time. Things were a bit more predictable. A bit safer. And the monster, as a result, had quieted. But it was still present every day, in some small way that was imperceptible unless one knew where to look.
When I wrote my first book, Wither, I was twenty four and life was a bit tumultuous. It was my escape, as ever, from myself. I enjoyed writing it and will forever be grateful for the things it has brought me. In the years to follow, I have told more stories and they have all meant something different and special to me.
When I wrote THE GLASS SPARE, however, I was in the worst state of my life to date. It was as though I woke up one morning and had become a magnet for all the little Things Iâd managed to avoid over the years. The monster was back and it had grown some muscles. It knew I was bigger and stronger than Iâd been when I was twelve, so it had grown bigger and stronger to match me, wit for wit.
I spent four months in my bed. I barely slept, and when I did, I dreamed of panic attacks and woke up to panic attacks. A relative brought me groceries, sometimes leaving them on the porch because my anxiety was such that I could not face another human being unless I had just taken a dose of my anxiety medication. I wasnât sure if I had lost myself completely, or it I was the most myself I had ever been. Iâm still not sure, because anxiety is so braided into every fiber of me, if someone were to reach in and pull it out, I would collapse into a heap of skin and bones with little sentience remaining.
This time, I could not separate myself from my writing. My story was not about a girl with mental illness. It was about a girl who woke up one morning to discover that everything she touched would turn to stone. âThis is not a metaphor,â I told myself. âMetaphors are a clichĂ©.â Eventually I came to terms with it being a metaphor. Whatever you want to call it, there is a very real chance that writing this story saved my life. It gave me a place to put all of those things poking at me, trying to make me break. And when that monster reached for me, I grabbed it by the neck and slammed it into the page.
Writing this story was not a cure. I still have OCD. I still have anxiety. Sometimes I hyperventilate and speed past the highway entrance and circle the block so I can work up my nerves. Sometimes I sit in my car and cry because I canât work up the courage to leave the driveway. Sometimes thereâs triumph and sometimes thereâs failure.
But every day, thereâs a place to put it.
Even though THE GLASS SPARE emerged from a dark time for me, and even though my memories of writing it are sometimes too horrible to address, I did not want to write a story wherein the truth was a burden. It is not, traditionally speaking, a story about mental illness, and quite possibly, only I would see the accidental metaphor. Wil turns all living things to stone with a touch, and as she gets stronger, whatever is causing it gets stronger too. Her mother counts and taps things in threes and fives. Her brother loses himself in the logic of Why Things Happen as a means of coping with what he canât control.
I wanted to write a fantasy where readers could fall in love, and cry, and celebrate, and mourn. I wanted to write a story that was honest. A story where what I struggle with doesnât disappear, but rather, it manifests into something that makes sense to me, and will maybe make sense to someone else out there. Iâve got this monster on my back, and I needed somewhere to put it.
Damn, this is so good
This is phenomenal.
I saw this on my professorâs door and I canât even deal with the accuracy.
Tag yourself, Iâm We Bury Our Feelings And Our Relatives Alive
Watch: Aziz Ansari had an amazing ten minute long monologue at SNL about Donald Trump and racism one day after Trumpâs inauguration
âMy parents love it here. Weâre not leaving.â
Gifs: Saturday Night Live
WATCH THE VIDEO
Aziz is speaking the truth, listen up folksâŠ
Hi, I'm really confused right now! Has echoes of us come out yet? If so, where can I buy it?
Hi! ECHOES OF US has indeed come out (and been out for a few years!) in the USA. Iâm less sure about in other countries, as each follows their own schedule. However, if youâre looking to reach ECHOES OF US in English, you can find it on Book Depository, which ships free to a whole bunch of countries :)
https://www.bookdepository.com/Echoes-Us-Kat-Zhang/9780062114938
Happy reading!
Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
âUlysses,â Lord Alfred Tennyson. (Read the full poem here.)
Hey, I read the first book in the hybrid chronicles (what's left of me) and it was pretty good, but I'm debating if I should read the next two, do you think I should?
Well, as the author, I might be a little biased, but I think you should! Especially if you enjoyed the first one :)
Hi! I'm actually doing a book critique and presentation of What's Left Of Me for my sci-fi themes of literature class. I was curious what aspects of your book do you think reflect fears of our actual society today?
Hello! Iâm sorry this is so delayedâI donât think Tumblr ever sent me a notification for this message, strangely.
There are a lot of aspects about Addie and Evaâs world, both big and little, that reflect our real world, I think, but one of the biggest things is fear of the Other. In the Americas of the Hybrid world, this fear is mostly directed at hybrids, and everything they represent. The non-hybrids feel that theyâre fundamentally different from the hybrids, and because they donât understand them, they demonize them, and fear themâand quickly, come to hate them.
Unfortunately, I think that reflects a lot of what happens between groups in real life, as well.
After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, Please come to the gate immediately. Wellâone pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she Did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knewâhowever poorly usedâ She stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the Following day. I said no, no, weâre fine, youâll get there, just late, Who is picking you up? Letâs call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and Would ride next to herâSouthwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and Found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering Questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookiesâlittle powdered Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nutsâout of her bagâ And was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, The lovely woman from Laredoâwe were all covered with the same Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolersâ Non-alcoholicâand the two little girls for our flight, one African American, one Mexican Americanâran around serving us all apple juice And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friendâby now we were holding handsâ Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gateâonce the crying of confusion stopped âhas seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), âWandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.â I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but thatâs as it should be. (via oliviacirce)
hand sketches
TL;DRÂ : Watch this incredible story in video
holy fuck! so how did the penguins taste?????
this is the cutest video in the entire world. this seal is just so afraid for this dumb weird baby she thinks sheâs found out in the ocean. have a bird. have another bird. no, see, eat the bird! the bird is food! why wonât this stupid baby eat. open your mouth you idiot baby i will feed you bird if itâs the last thing i do
Famous authors, their writings and their rejection letters.
Sylvia Plath:Â There certainly isnât enough genuine talent for us to take notice.
Rudyard Kipling:Â Iâm sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just donât know how to use the English language.
Emily Dickinson:Â [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.
Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.
Dr. Seuss:Â Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.
The Diary of Anne Frank:Â The girl doesnât, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the âcuriosityâ level.
Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)
H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would âtakeââŠI think the verdict would be âOh donât read that horrid bookâ. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
Edgar Allan Poe:Â Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.
Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashionedâŠ
Jack London:Â [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.
William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I donât think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you donât have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I canât publish this!
Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
Joseph Heller (on Catchâ22): I havenât really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say⊠Apparently the author intends it to be funny â possibly even satire â but it is really not funny on any intellectual level ⊠From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermereâs Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): ⊠overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian ⊠the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream ⊠I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
John Grishamâs first novel was rejected 25 times.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.
Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.
Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.
Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline LâEngle received 26 rejections.
Frank Herbertâs Dune was rejected 20 times.
Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.
The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.
Harry Potter and The Philosopherâs Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.
Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters
Now thisâŠTHIS inspires me.
Donât give up people.
Dear Maggie, I enjoy immensely how enthusiastic you are about life and how confident you are of yourself and wish I could learn to be like this myself. As a struggling 20 something who is aimlessly flapping her arms as she falls through life, do you have any advice on learning how to drive fearlessly through life in the way that you do? I know that there is no concrete way to answer this, but any words are appreciated. Thank you.
Dear rikkari,
I am not you and you are not me, so the value of my personal commandments might not work for you, but here they are:
1. Decide life is going to be great. All other methods will fail without this prerequisite. A decision that life will be great allows a terrible event to turn into a plot twist along the way, not a confirmation that your life is shit.
2. Actually enjoy things. Itâs #aesthetic to lean on things broodily while looking disengaged, but itâs inherently exclusionary and not as cool as being actually visibly in to life and living.
3. Do it for you, where it = the all of everything. Yes, look cool, but look cool for yourself. At the end of the day, it only matters if you look at your life and say âsweet, man!â Because youâre the only one who has to live in your head.
4. Do anything you want, as long as it is not hurting other people or yourself. The second part of this sentence is just as crucial as the first. Donât do dumb self-sabotaging shit or use up your body before youâre done with it. But otherwise, if you think it might be interesting, do it.
5. Eliminate the time between saying youâre going to do something and actually doing it. Donât say âone day Iâm going to do this thing.â Say âIâm going to do this thingâ and allow that sentence to be a mission statement and your next action to be putting that thing into play.
6. Find your people. They are out there; donât settle for substitutes.
7. Make the world beautiful. In every thing you do, see if you can leave the world a tiny bit prettier or more interesting than when you got there.
8. Love people. All sorts of people on all different parts of their personal journey. Study them and see what makes them tick and see if you can learn from them and vice versa.
9. Lean into anxiety. Anxiety is a chain link fence. A boundary made worse by being able to see whatâs on the other side. You can get through it if you are both strong enough and come equipped with tools or friends with tools. And the more anxiety fences you break through, the fewer you will find in front of you: they are not a renewable resource.
10. Love yourself. Perfect is boring. Someone trying to be the best form of themselves? The most interesting thing in the world.
Go get âem, tiger.
urs,
Stiefvater