Conzpire

You’ve written your first chapter! Hooray! At least, that’s what you thought your friends would say. Along with popping a bottle of champagne for you. Instead, they keep asking when you’ll be done already. Your throat tightens. After all, you spent five months in an isolated haze to give birth to that pearl of a […]

Has anyone else ever gotten something they’ve longed for forever and then thought, That was IT? Now what? I shot up to my present height of 5’6” by the time I was 12. Back in Malaysia, the kids at school called me “Satay Stick” or Popeye’s ungainly girlfriend “Olive Oyl.” My aunties lamented my unattractive […]

Beyond the fun of it, reading writers you admire is a great way to unlock your own literary potential. You don’t have to be an English Lit major. You don’t have to write a tiresome book report. These three simple steps will get you reading and improving as a writer. Step One: Study the masters […]

What makes chocolate the darling of the dessert world? What separates it from mere confectionary? My theory: chocolate doesn’t pander. It has the audacity to be bitter. It’s exactly that undercurrent of bitterness that swathes it in the complexity and range so worthy of food faddists and traditionalists alike. Its contradictions give it the depth […]

Fiction writer Yuri Tanaka* thinks she’s nearing the end of her novel. When she’s busy being mom to her two kids or working part-time to support her family, she’s slaved away at this novel. Yet its completion actually worries more than thrills her. “I think I’m actually afraid of finishing my novel,” she says. “When […]