A Conversation with Award-winning Author Julie Leung and Award-winning Illustrator Angie Kang, Creators of Navigating Night

Welcome to Season 6, Episode 09! On a few rare occasions, we've invited more than one guest at a time, and we're doing it for this episode! Today's guests are Julie Leung and Angie Kang. Both are award-winning creators. Julie is an author with multiple titles to her name while Angie is both an author and illustrator. Their latest work, Navigating Night, is written by Julie and illustrated by Angie, and it will release on March 10.  Navigating Night is the heart-warming story of a girl who helps guide her dad on his route delivering Chinese take-out food from their restaurant. She does this every night because her English is better than his. This wonderful picture book focuses on an element of the immigrant experience that some Asian Americans face, needing to help support their parents in business and family matters. We love how it celebrates the unique bond between immigrant parents and their children. Julie Leung has a long history of writing picture book biographies that include The Truth About Dragons (a 2024 Caldecott Honor book and winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature), Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist (winner of the 2021 American Library Associations Asian/Pacific American Award for Best Picture Book), A Banquet for Cecilia, Mr. Pei's Perfect Shapes: The Story of Architect I. M. Pei, and The Fearless Flights of Hazel Ying Lee. Angie Kang is the author-illustrator of Our Lake which received a Caldecott Honor, the Charlotte Zolotow Award, and the Dilys Evans Founder's Award. She's a 2026 Sendak Fellow and the 2025 Ezra Jack Keats Fellow at MacDowell, her writing and artwork has appeared in The New Yorker, The Believer, Narrative, Ecotone, Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. On her website, she shares several great samples of her paintings, short form comics, poetry, fiction, and essays.  In our conversation we discuss their journeys, what they hope readers get from Navigating Night, how Angie decided on the artwork, what Julie likes about Picture Book biographies, what it's like when a book releases, and so much more. To see more of Julie's work, you can visit jleungbooks.com or follow her on instagram @jleungbooks. To see more of Angie's work you can visit angiekang.net or follow her on instagram at @anqiekanq. We highly recommend getting Navigating Night for you or as a gift for others! If you like what we do, please share, follow, and like us in your podcast directory of choice or on Instagram @AAHistory101. For previous episodes and resources, please visit our site at https://asianamericanhistory101.libsyn.com or our links at http://castpie.com/AAHistory101. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, email us at [email protected].