May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and you can celebrate the heritage, contributions, and writings of these diverse peoples through the Free Library’s Author Events audio podcast and YouTube video archives. Here’s a compilation of ten authors we’ve welcomed over the past year or so, but our complete archive is obviously much more extensive.

Head over to the Author Events podcast page and YouTube channel for more! And as a special bonus to help you on your way, at the end of this post we’ve included an all-star roster of 15 of our other favorite AAPI guests from over the years!

Michelle Zauner | Crying in H Mart

In conversation with Homay King

Recorded April 14, 2023

The lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist of the indie rock outfit Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner has garnered wide acclaim for her shoegaze-inspired pop earworms. These works include Psychopomp, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, and her 2021 breakthrough album Jubilee, for which she received Grammy Award nominations for Best Alternative Music Album and Best New Artist. Zauner is also the author of Crying in H Mart, a memoir based on her viral 2018 New Yorker essay of the same name. A New York Times bestseller and selected as one of 2021’s best books by a wide range of periodicals, it offers an honest perspective on her identity as a Korean American, the death of her mother, and the struggles of her early musical career. She is currently adapting this memoir into a screenplay for MGM Studios.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Vanessa Hua | Forbidden City

In conversation with Pia Sarkar

Recorded April 3, 2023 

A former longtime columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Vanessa Hua has written about Asia and the diaspora from countries such as China, Burma, and South Korea, and has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She is the author of the bestselling novel A River of Stars, the award-winning story collection Deceit and Other Possibilities, and fiction that has been published in numerous literary journals. Hua’s honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. A national bestseller longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and named one of the best novels of the year by several publications, Forbidden City tells the story of a teenage girl in 1960s China who becomes a heroine of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong’s lover.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Leth Oun and Joe Samuel Starnes | A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service

Recorded February 28, 2023

Veteran United States Secret Service Officer Leth Oun has protected presidents and vice presidents in four administrations in almost every state and more than a dozen countries. A political refugee who survived the genocidal Killing Fields of Cambodia, he arrived in America in 1983, became a citizen in 1990, earned a college degree from Widener University in 1998, and went to work for the federal government in 2000. 

Joe Samuel Starnes' three celebrated novels include Calling, Red Dirt, and Fall Line, which was named to The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s 2011 “Best of the South” list. All of these works are featured in an essay in Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives. His articles have appeared in several periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and his essays, short stories, and poems have been published in numerous literary journals.

A Refugee’s American Dream recounts Oun’s father’s execution by the brutal Khmer Rouge, his almost four years of enslavement in the Killing Fields followed by more than three years in refugee camps, his arrival in America as a penniless 17-year-old, and his transcendent journey to the Secret Service that culminates with his return to Cambodia as part of President Obama’s protection detail.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Ilyon Woo | Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

In conversation with Imani Perry

Recorded January 19, 2023

Ilyon Woo is the author of The Great Divorce, the “lively, well-written, and engrossing tale” (The New York Times Book Review) of a young mother’s five-year fight against her husband, the Shakers religious sect, and the norms of 19th century United States for her and her children’s freedom. The recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant and of fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Woo has contributed writing to The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe. Her latest book recounts the remarkable true story of an enslaved husband and wife who posed as master and slave while trekking more than 1,000 miles to freedom in the mid-19th century United States.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Rabia Chaudry | Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

Recorded November 9, 2022 

Attorney, advocate, and podcaster Rabia Chaudry is the author of the New York Times bestseller Adnan's Story, a true-crime analysis of the 2000 conviction of a young Baltimorean for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. Also the executive producer of The Case Against Adnan Syed, the HBO documentary series based on the book, Chaudry is the co-host and co-producer of the popular podcasts Undisclosed, The 45th, and The Hidden Djinn. In addition to earning fellowships from the Aspen Institute, the Truman National Security Project, and the Shalom Hartman Institute, she is the founder and president of the Safe Nation Collaborative, an organization that promotes education about the Islamic faith. In her new memoir, Chaudry tells an intimate story of body positivity, societal expectations, and growing up in a loving but overly concerned Pakistani immigrant family.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Anand Giridharadas | The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition

Recorded November 2, 2022

A former longtime columnist and foreign correspondent for The New York Times, Anand Giridharadas is the bestselling author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, selected for numerous publications’ “best books of the year” lists. His other books include The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, winner of the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism; and India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking. A regular on-air analyst for MSNBC, he has taught journalism at New York University and contributed articles to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and TIME magazine. In The Persuaders, Giridharadas offers insider accounts of the dissenting politicians, activists, and everyday citizens working to heal and safeguard U.S. democracy.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Yiyun Li | The Book of Goose

Recorded October 6, 2022

Yiyun Li’s “remarkable” (The Washington Post) debut fiction collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. Her other work includes the novel The Vagrants; the story collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; and the memoir Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Windham-Campbell Prize, Li teaches writing at Princeton University and is a contributing editor for A Public Space. A story of obsession and friendship, her new novel follows a woman’s mental journey back to the war-ravaged French village of her youth.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Bo Seo | Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard

In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster, and journalist

Recorded June 14, 2022

A two-time world champion debater and a former coach of the Harvard College Debating Union and the Australian national debating team, Bo Seo has won the World Schools Debating Championship and the World Universities Debating Championship. He formerly served as a national reporter for the Australian Financial Review and has contributed writing to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and CNN, among other media outlets. He is a law school student at Harvard and has a master’s degree in public policy from Tsinghua University. In Good Arguments, Seo describes how debate empowered him to find his voice amidst his family’s emigration from Korea to Australia when he was only 8, the ways in which many other people have utilized spoken rhetoric on their paths to success, and the specific debate strategies anyone can use to improve their lives.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Maxine Hong Kingston | The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, Other Writings

In conversation with volume editor, Viet Thanh Nguyen

Recorded June 8, 2022 

Acclaimed for her contributions to feminism and Chinese American literature, Maxine Hong Kingston won the 1976 National Book Critics Circle General Nonfiction Award for her first book, The Woman Warrior, and the 1981 National Book Award for general nonfiction for China Men. Her many other books of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and essays include Tripmaster Monkey, The Fifth Book of Peace, and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life. A professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, Kingston is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the National Humanities Medal, and a lifetime achievement award from the Asian American Literary Awards. Her latest work collects three of her classic books, a collection of essays about her time living in Hawaiʻi, and difficult-to-find writings in which she examines her creative process.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Jennifer Lin | Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Historic Journey to China

In conversation with Nydia Han, Consumer Investigative Reporter and co-anchor of 6ABC Action News Sunday mornings

Recorded April 5, 2022 

A reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 31 years, Jennifer Lin worked as an international correspondent in China, a national correspondent in Washington, D.C., and a financial correspondent on Wall Street. She is the author of the family memoir Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family. Her documentary Beethoven in Beijing, co-directed with Sharon Mullally, recently premiered on PBS’s Great Performances. In her companion book of the same name, Lin uses interviews and news stories to recount the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 historic tour of China, which at that time still banned Western music.

Enjoy this episode on the Free Library Podcast or the Author Events YouTube page

Other notable Free Library Podcast AAPI guests:

• Viet Thanh Nguyen | The Committed
• Lan Samantha Chang | The Family Chao
• Amartya Sen | Home in the World: A Memoir
• Ro Khanna | Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us
• Jessamine Chan | The School for Good Mothers
• Hanya Yanagihara | To Paradise
• Kevin Kwan | Sex and Vanity
• Amy Tan | Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir
• Min Jin Lee | Pachinko
• Senator Mazie K. Hirono | Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story
• Susan Choi | Trust Exercise
• Amelia Pang | Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods
• Ha Jin | The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)
• Anchee Min | The Cooked Seed: A Memoir
• Morimoto | Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking