Student Spotlight: Ann Liang
By Yue Chen and Joanne Zou
This interview was originally published in sinθ #24 “EMBER 炎”. Get it now on BLURB.
Chinese-Australian Young Adult novelist Ann Liang recently graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BA, majoring in history and media/communications. Born in Beijing, she has spent her life traveling and living between China and Australia. Liang is the author of If You Could See the Sun, to be published by Inkyard Press in October 2022. Her upcoming releases also include This Time It’s Real (Scholastic, 2023) and I Am Not Jessica Chen (Inkyard Press, 2024). Liang’s three forthcoming novels wrangle with the pressures of coming-of-age in complex, competitive academic settings and span genres including magical realism, romantic comedy, and thriller.
We caught up with Liang in July over Zoom; this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Yue Chen: You’re in Melbourne right now — how long have you been in Australia?
Ann Liang: I’ve been moving back and forth my whole life. I was born in Beijing. I moved to Melbourne when I was five. We actually moved back to Beijing when I was ten, and we came back again when I was 15. So that’s seven years.
Joanne Zou: If You Could See the Sun sits at the intersection of a few ideas like class dynamics, displacement and coming of age in Beijing, the boarding school environment, and magical realism. What was the initial inspiration behind these ideas, and how did you go about putting all the pieces together?
AL: My inspiration came from many different sources; that’s probably why the end result is all of that [variety]. I was inspired by Crazy Rich Asians; for a lot of people, it was really cool to see that kind of representation on screen. The C-dramas that I’ve watched were also a major source of inspiration. I’ve had people say, “This particular scene in the book gives me such C-drama vibes, I can visualize it as a scene.” That always makes me really happy. Also things like Gossip Girl, which I binged when I was, like, thirteen…
When I was writing [If You Could See the Sun], it was just what I was feeling most inspired to write at the moment. I didn’t even think about the genre thing until we were trying to sell the book, find agents. Right now, we’ve defined it as contemporary with a speculative twist.
YC: There’s this overarching theme of invisibility, which is particularly important, even to the double meaning of the title referencing both sunlight and the protagonist, whose surname is ‘Sun’. Could you speak to the intention that you had behind this parallel and what led you to that?
AL: Part of the fun is when readers come in with their own interpretations. When I thought of the invisibility element, I didn’t want to turn it into too much of an obvious learning moment for the reader. I wanted [it] to be a bit more woven in, in terms of [the theme of] invisibility. Invisibility is obviously a really good metaphor for Alice because she doesn’t feel seen, and yet at the same time, she desperately wants to be seen and recognised. I wanted to make her worst fears come true. Her biggest fear was: even after hard work, despite all her ambition, nobody else in that school really sees [her]. The obvious solution to that would be to make her literally invisible. And it’s also interesting how her idea of what it means to be seen also changes. At the beginning, it’s very much about how others see you — and then I don’t want to spoil too much, but towards the end, it’s about how you see yourself.
JZ: Alice is motivated by academic success in an elite environment, where she lacks the class privileges of her peers, and instead faces significant economic pressures. What were some challenges about metaphorizing and depicting these realities?
AL: I wanted the invisibility to feel very natural. So it was almost like you don’t really notice a difference between when she’s feeling invisible on the inside… it’s something that you see on the outside. As for the class differences, that feeling of not measuring up to privileged peers, that was just something that naturally came with the setting, because I went to that sort of elite international school when I was in Beijing. I remember it was a shock. Some of my classmates’ lifestyles were very different; they were going to these villas, going shopping and [coming] back with bags of designer [items], stuff like that — I didn’t even know that people had these lifestyles.
YC: At the beginning, Henry calls Alice’s invisibility a “power” and claims that “everything’s a form of power.” Alice argues that “power implies some level of control.” Do you think that her invisibility does become a ‘power’ by the end of the novel?
AL: [Alice] is this very power-hungry kind of person. That whole idea of power also lends itself to ambition. And so the realization that she comes to at the end is that ambition isn’t always good; it’s not everything that it’s cracked up to be. Similarly, in terms of power, she sees that power isn’t just about accessing secrets and stuff. There’s also power — and this sounds really cheesy — in your relationships and developments with other people and how you see yourself.
JZ: If You Could See the Sun has such a specific Beijing setting. How much do you think your own experience in Beijing shapes your storytelling? Did you have an audience in mind?
AL: It’s definitely a huge part of how I shaped the book. I wasn’t really writing it with the intention of, “This is definitely going to sell, this is definitely going to be a book.” When I was writing it, it was just for myself, so I wanted to be as specific as possible. From a craft perspective, that’s what really brings a setting, an environment, or a world to life — the world-building is really in the details. So even if someone isn’t familiar with the setting, I want [them] to feel completely immersed. I also just wanted to write about Beijing the way that I know, the way that I’ve lived it. I didn’t really want to approach it from the angle of a tourist — I didn’t want it to be about the Great Wall and pandas. I wanted it to feel a bit like home. Obviously, you can’t do that with a single book, which is part of the reason I’ve returned to the Beijing setting for my second book.
During the editing process, I would always have the choice of how many explanations [to include]. I know there are a lot of words that some people might not be familiar with, and there are certain terms that are hard to translate. There are things where I’m like, “If it’s really impossible to tell what it is, I might provide a bit of contextualization.” As a whole, the audience that I had in mind was people like me, even as specific as people who went to international schools. The really cool thing is with early readers, I’m surprised by how many people have actually also gone to international schools or have lived in Beijing and who’ve messaged to say, like, “I’ve never seen so many of these references, or mentions of popular Chinese stuff.” That makes it worth it, and it’s why I chose to include those details.
YC: Who are some authors you look up to, and from whom do you draw inspiration?
AL: There are literally way too many for me to name. I guess there’s earlier inspiration — when I just got into writing, the author that I was reading the most was RL Stine, which I would say [is] pretty different [from] the books I ended up writing. The suspense, the tension, that really got me hooked — and just the way that he described different emotions, mostly fear.
I grew up with YA — when there was that The Hunger Games boom and everything; I was that target market. Suzanne Collins was a huge influence. I went through a dystopian phase: there was also the Shatter Me series, which was really influential because those books had such a strong voice. Nowadays, there are so many amazing authors that I’m debuting with that I really look up to. I was reading As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh — her book is so beautifully written.
YC: A lot of the members of our Sine Theta community are creators themselves. Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists, especially those around our age?
AL: The first one that is pretty broad, that has helped me most, is: draw inspiration from different mediums. Read widely, I think that’s a very common piece of advice, but is very true. Outside different genres of novels, also [read] poetry, or short stories, [because] the prose might be different and you can get a feel of that. But also, like I was saying earlier, I was so inspired by movies and dramas — even a particular song or piece of art are valid forms of inspiration, and those can really help you shape your voice or help you discover what you’re passionate about.
If you’re younger, in your 20s, I would say don’t be afraid to play around with different things. Because it’s very early: you have so many years left to write. You don’t have to feel pressure to know exactly what kind of book you want to write, or what kind of writer you want to be. In general, you don’t have to feel rushed. [For] a lot of people — a pressure I also kind of felt — -–you really want to get published, or you feel like you have to achieve so and so as soon as possible. But it’s okay. There isn’t a timeline; [it’s] whatever timeline suits you.
JZ: Could you tell us more about your next books, This Time It’s Real and I Am Not Jessica Chen, and the stages they’re currently at?
AL: [This Time It’s Real] is very romcom, and [Jessica Chen] is a lot darker and more about impostor syndrome and burnout and academic validation. This Time It’s Real is about motorcycle rides around Beijing and falling in love for the first time. I realized that I didn’t want to stay in a single genre — I wanted to keep experimenting, I wanted to write all kinds of books. You know that often-quoted, ‘We contain multitudes, blah blah blah’? With writing, there are many different types of books that you have in you, and you want to explore them all. This Time It’s Real is coming out pretty soon, which is very exciting and also nerve-wracking. Especially because it is a bit differentof a difference from my first book, but there are many elements that these books both share so I’m excited to see readers’ response.
JZ: You mentioned music earlier — what did you listen to for this book?
AL: There was a lot of Taylor Swift — just her whole discography in the background. Taylor Swift and also this OST for this Chinese donghua that actually came out after this book was written, but I felt like parts of it aligned really well. It’s called Link Click, or 时光代理人. It’s so good. They have songs in there by this band called Jaws, so that OST was playing later on when I was editing and when I wanted to get back into the scenes, and later when I was writing bonus content that is yet to be released.
YC: What are you reading right now?
AL: I’ve developed this really bad habit of reading, like, ten books at the same time. I’m not exaggerating; if you look at my Kindle, it just has ten books open and they’re all at, like, 40%. A book that I’m almost done [reading is] Some Mistakes Were Made by Kristin Dwyer. It’s angsty in the best way: it’s got that YA yearning and angst, and I’m very much enjoying it.
