👁️🌳🌕🐇🎇! WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE out Fall 2025! I can't wait for everyone to meet Lola Treasure Gold ❤️ ❤️
Book two is brand new, but it's been such a joy to work with this same home team! Thank you so much @geraldmarc@helen.atsma@jklambert16@jrichman
September has already been an extremely unpredictable month, but at least I can tell you how it will end: with the release of What a Time to Be Alive!!
Also, screenshot to use this little promo reel as your September vibe predictor! Tell me what you got! (Unless you get something you hate in which case all fortune-telling is a lie and we create our own destinies!)
In my early twenties I started a novel about a wayward young woman who somehow formed a cult. I wrote it by hand, in an orange, spiral-bound notebook that had an illustration of a cute ghost riding a skateboard on the cover.
A few months and many pages in, I lost the notebook somewhere deep in the bowels of a Tokyo municipal building. Devastation! I went back for weeks, learned how to say 'lost and found' in Japanese, left my phone number with a dozen different bureaucrats, but it was gone.
I never stopped thinking about that notebook and that novel, and in early 2022 I put everything else aside to *finally* write WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.
Now that it's done, I'm glad it took so long! My questions about belief and mortality and love are lifelong, but my understanding of the many ways you can be in the world have shifted and expanded so much.
And then there's this: In the three intense years I spent writing this novel, I often wished I had that orange notebook, but it is only IN THIS VERY MOMENT that I'm realizing the long lost ghost and skateboard are at the *very core* of this book, in an extremely literal, not even slightly metaphorical way!
They came back! Or they were here all along! Like I said, what a time to be alive!
Pre-order now to share my amazement! (And please tell me about your lost notebooks!)
Save the date for Wednesday, March 11, 2026 from 6:30–8 p.m. (PT) for WeHo Reads: Writing Together—Pomodoros, Marinara, and Friendship
Writing a book is often imagined as a solitary act: thousands of quiet hours, alone with a blinking cursor. But for five friends—Jade Chang, Angela Flournoy, Aja Gabel, Jean Chen Ho, and Xuan Juliana Wang—that myth unraveled in a corner booth at Little Dom’s, an Italian American restaurant in Los Feliz where they gathered week after week to write together.
This moderated literary conversation brings these five women of color together to reflect on what it meant to build a creative practice rooted in friendship.
Featuring:
Jade Chang, author of two critically acclaimed novels, What a Time to Be Alive and The Wangs vs. the World, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award;
Angela Flournoy, author of The Wilderness, a national bestseller that was long-listed for the National Book Award;
Aja Gabel, author of the novel Lightbreakers and a screenwriter;
Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane; and
Xuan Juliana Wang, author of the short story collection Home Remedies, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction.
WeHo Reads: Writing Together—Pomodoros, Marinara, and Friendship
Wednesday, March 11, 2026 | 6:30–8 p.m. (PT)
Online via Zoom and YouTube
Free, RSVP Requested: /e/weho-reads-writing-togetherpomodoros-marinara-and-friendship-tickets-1983004222009?aff=writers
WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. For more information and events, visit /wehoreads. The 2026 season is produced by BookSwell, a literary media company amplifying historically excluded voices. Additional support is provided by media partnerships with Book Soup and Los Angeles Review of Books. Attendees are advised that the program may include mature language and themes.
It’s Books That Matter day! In this episode I’m talking with @hellojadechang about THE WOMAN WARRIOR by Maxine Hong Kingston. Jade shares about how this memoir came into her life and the unexpected—even unconscious—way it influenced her new novel WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE. You can find this spoiler-free episode in my newsletter or on Spotify!
#BookThatMatter #WhatATimeToBeAlive #TheWomanWarrior #FictionMatters
Yet another iconic installment of #ShowUsYourDesk for the books! Catch @gregmania in conversation with @hellojadechang (with a hilarious cameo from Tommy Pico) in full here. See you next month for December’s desk reveal!
#therumpus #literarymagazine #authors #writingcommunity #interview #gregmania #jadechang
For years, Jade Chang, Angela Flournoy, Aja Gabel, Jean Chen Ho and Xuan Juliana Wang met for regular work sessions at the cozy Italian American restaurant on Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz. They adopted the Pomodoro method, writing in timed increments and taking breaks in between to talk.
"I was at a place where I couldn’t write anything," says @boyandgirlaffair . "Sometimes it was just having that set time, forcing yourself to write anything down. After the pandemic, and after having kids, it was like I forgot who I was and how to be — and then it took the poms, 30 minutes at a time, to remember who I was again, a writer."
Read the conversation at the link in bio.
Words @jeanho66
Photography @nori.rasmussenmartinez
Subjects @hellojadechang@angelaflournoy@ajagabel@boyandgirlaffair
Went old school with the marketing for my 10/28 @bnhuntingtonbeach event, inspired by @clurtheflaneur !
Join me + @margaretwappler + @ajagabel as we discuss my new book, WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE, and how to write a book with friends! Please tell any OC people you know, especially anyone trying to write things!
Talking influencer culture and cool kids in high school this week with @hellojadechang , author of WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.
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Is influencing just high school all over again?
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Full conversation with Jade Chang up on all podcast platforms.
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#thestacks #thestackspodcast #authorinterview #thestacksepisode #eccobooks #jadechang #whatatimetobealive
DIY Fame with Jade Chang
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Today on The Stacks, we are joined by @hellojadechang to discuss her newest novel, WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE. This book follows Lola Treasure Gold, a down-on-her-luck 31-year-old balancing accidental internet fame with enduring grief after her speech at her best friend’s wake goes viral. We discuss the book’s 20-year journey, the evolution of influencer culture, and the unexpected pleasures of grief.
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Who is your favorite influencer/social media personality?
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You can listen now. Share it with your online bookish bestie.
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#thestacks #thestackspodcast #authorinterview #thestacksepisode #eccobooks #jadechang #whatatimetobealive
PORTLAND!!! Join us in the city where I had my first true moment with the moon! Thursday Oct 9 @literaryarts with @gkhudson !!
(Yes it's true this video was not shot in Portland!! It's from Chicago on Tuesday, when the Super moon was its fullest, right after my event @seminarycoopbookstores ! (@57thstreetbooks )
And thank you @tin_house writers workshop - it would never have happened without you!
We are thrilled to welcome Jade Chang to our Reading Retreat. Jade will be sharing her new novel WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE with us. The novel touches on so many themes of our retreat. The Cost of Creativity, Redefining Womanhood, Friendships and so much more.
WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE is a deeply moving and often hilarious novel following a woman who becomes an internet folk hero in the most unexpected way, catapulting her into fame and influence just as she’s finally beginning to reckon with her complicated past.
“Chang’s irresistible narrative effortlessly toggles between story lines as Lola explores her origins and deals with her grief and youthful angst. Readers will be glad to encounter Lola’s arresting voice.” — Publishers Weekly
Jade Chang is the author of What a Time to Be Alive (Ecco). Her debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World (HMH), won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and has been published in a dozen countries. Her journalism and essays have recently appeared in The Best American Food Writing, and in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times magazines. She also writes for film and TV. Jade lives in Los Angeles.
