Happy pub. day to M Lin's THE MEMORY MUSEUM, an expansive debut story collection exploring the complex lives of women in China and the Chinese diaspora. 🖇️ Link in bio for M's tour details! Pick up a copy from your local indie today ☁️💜🎟️
on the day of the academy awards, i’m sharing a list of films that are important to The Memory Museum: some of these are explicitly mentioned in the book, some are described or talked about or watched by characters, some feature the same milieu or subject matter, some are style references, and some are just vibes! i get asked a lot how cinema influences my writing, the honest is answer is i don’t really know! it’s like asking how being Chinese or being a woman influences my writing - it just is part of me at this point. i love movies so so so much. happy watching! 🎥🎬📽️🎞️ (also i can’t believe i forgot to put Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy for Magic, Something Less Assuring, oops, i stole the title from it after all)
debut reel for my debut book!!! i went to film school for this 😂 but for real, i think i chose to be behind the camera, and then behind my pen, for a reason. in lieu of a traditional unboxing video in which i’d feel the pressure to deliver a performance, here is a fun video! THE MEMORY MUSEUM is here, and she is gorgeous!!! i hope this video helps you find a copy wherever you are. preorder please 💜
“Deeply felt and grounded in an intimate acquaintance with contemporary China, these wide-ranging stories portray villagers, protesters, artists, and petty thieves alike with empathy and grace. Nothing is easy for them, and the questions they raise are not easy for us. What an absorbing, probing debut! Wonderful.”—Gish Jen, author of Bad Bad Girl
I’m loving M Lin’s story collection The Memory Museum, and it’s really neat that the author (and book) has so many Pittsburgh connections. In her Instagram post, the author mentioned Wang Xiaobo and Li Yinhe, who studied at the University of Pittsburgh. I should also mention that Li-Young Lee began writing poetry in Pittsburgh, and I recall meeting Huang Xiang and seeing his House Poem when I was an undergrad at Pitt.
This is going to be a great event, and I hope you can make it!
Pittsburgh is where my partner grew up, and i’ve been hearing about yinz for 11 years! when we went to the burgh in 2016, i was ready to finally meet the historically jewish neighborhood Squirrel Hill. but as we turned off the freeway in the dark of the night, the first storefront i saw was a Chinese bakery, and a Chinese bakery meant there was enough of a whole community to support such an establishment. not surprisingly, we later discovered many more Chinese restaurants on Forbes and Murray avenue. it was such an interesting trip for both of us - the mix of the old and the new, of the east and west, of a neighborhood and a city in flux. pittsburgh as a city has gone through such impressive transformations in the past, and somehow the lives of both of us felt intertwined with it.
so there’s a story in The Memory Museum set in Pittsburgh, in which a secondary character stocks shelves in the Chinese supermarket on Forbes avenue. and Pittsburgh has a place in contemporary Chinese literature, too, because of Wang Xiaobo and Li Yinhe, who studied at University of Pittsburgh in the 1980s. this is all to say - i’m so very excited to come to Pittsburgh!
please join me and a fellow short story writer @robertyune who generously agreed to read my book “sight unseen” at the wonderful @whitewhalebks . i’m looking forward to our conversation, and to seeing all of you there!!
I loved interviewing my friend M Lin ( @the_memory_museum ) about her debut short-story collection, “The Memory Museum,” for @electricliterature ! I had the pleasure of reading some of these stories in their earliest stages while we were in graduate school, and it’s been amazing to see this collection come to fruition…📚📚📚 Link in bio and story!
My SF interlocutor needs no introduction as a writer, but if you haven’t crossed paths with Reese, you might not know what an amazing human she is off the page. The Memory Museum owes so much to her endless support, which i will not enumerate here (and there’s more to come too!) and i feel very fortunate to be read with her care and intelligence. this is a conversation i’m sooooo excited about, and i hope you will join us!
May 12th, Tuesday, 7PM. in person and online!
thank you for the legendary @citylightsbooks for hosting us - truly a dream to be launching The Memory Museum here!
originally when i planned the book tour, Seattle was going to be my final stop, and i wanted it to be special in some way. so instead of looking for a local author who i might not personally know, i wanted to have this conversation with a friend, who i know to be a meticulous and generous reader, who is a fellow pianist, and whose understanding of the book i’ve been looking forward to. Larry and i met through the extended family that is the fiction mfa at brooklyn college, and we’re thrilled to reunite on the opposite coast of the continent!
please join Larry and me next week on May 14, Thursday, at 7PM at the wonderful @elliottbaycompany which has hosted many authors who were instrumental in the publication of The Memory Museum over their brilliant careers. thank you for allowing me to follow their literal and literary steps.
see you in Seattle!!!
i admired @boyandgirlaffair ‘s short story collection, Home Remedies, when i first read it long before i started writing it myself. it was a rare window into contemporary China, into a world that felt familiar to me in English. i’ve talked about this elsewhere but one of the reasons i started writing the stories in The Memory Museum is that so much fiction about China has focused on or is set in history, when China was a very difference place (however in so many ways the same too). so when i got galleys, i was very excited to share it with Julie, and i can’t wait to hear her reading of these stories, and to have this conversation with her.
city of angels!! please join us at the wonderful @skylightbooks at 7pm on May 7th, Thursday. thank you to my talented friend @meanmisterkien and @kundimanforever southern california for co-presenting this reading.
☁️ GIVEAWAY! ☁️
To celebrate M Lin's new collection, The Memory Museum, we're giving away a copy of the book and a copy of Ploughshares' Winter 2023-24 issue, which features her EWC-winning short story, "野火烧不尽/no prairie fire can destroy all the weeds."
To enter:
☁️ Follow @graywolfpress and @psharesjournal .
☁️ Tag a friend in the comments.
Entry limited to U.S. residents only. Enter by May 9th for a chance to win!
Pause your night for something meaningful.
Join us this evening with M Lin, author of The Memory Museum: Stories.
⏰ 7:00–8:00 PM
📍 Parkway Central Library
A powerful collection exploring memory, migration, and identity across generations and cultures.
Tap the link in bio to register and join us.
#FreeLibraryAuthorSeries #FreeLibraryFoundation #PhillyEvents #PhillyReads
