Vanessa Hua on Forbidden City

First pages are impossible… so we’re hearing from authors about how they got them right. In this episode, Vanessa Hua discusses the first pages of her latest novel, Forbidden City. We talk about how she stuck to her instincts about the power of her prologue, the reminiscent narrator, and how to handle direct address.Hua's first pages can be found here.Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.Finally, here's a link to the photo that launched Vanessa's book.Vanessa Hua, is author of DECEIT AND OTHER POSSIBILITIES, a NYT Editors pick, and the national bestsellers A RIVER OF STARS and FORBIDDEN CITY. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, and the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Award for fiction. She has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, Aspen Summer Words, Voices of Our Nation, Community of Writers at Squaw, and Napa Valley writing conferences. Her work has appeared in New York Times, FRONTLINE/World, PRI's The World, The Atlantic, ZYZZYVA, Guernica, and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and twins. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and elsewhere.Thank you for reading The 7am Novelist. This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com