Naomi Xu Elegant — Gingko Season - with Hasan Dudar

After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum's vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the comfortable company of close friends. One day, she happens to meet Hoang, who confesses to releasing mice from the cancer research lab where he works. Hoang's openness catches Penelope off guard; from then on, she finds her carefully constructed life slowly start to unravel. Told in Penelope's witty, vulnerable, and thoroughly endearing voice, Gingko Season captures three seasons of reawakening, challenges, and transformation.This wise and tenderhearted novel explores the nature of our deepest friendships as seriously as it does the dizzying terror and thrill of falling in love, and the complications of trying to live a life that matches your ideals.PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324086147?ic_referral=8OzHlClGmgFyKuzHzUcn3sYkVz_sMrj5f5nOnQ4L5xAwMzbPEcTIwlB4mxfbgFZgkjp93YxZ1JTPesuJ8mwuGwARcEEUGjwsJ9qe6J8Z-3ruzWhz9aWn7Ck3wtVI4l-wRhz1qNMNaomi Xu Elegant is a writer and journalist living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Monocle, Fortune, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere.Elegant is in coversation with Hasan Dudar, a writer living in Washington, D.C. His debut collection of short stories, Carryout, is forthcoming with the University of Iowa Press in the Spring of 2026. He is originally from Toledo, Ohio.