Malinda Lo

At the end of March I took a whirlwind trip to the East Coast, where I visited a bunch of friends, met my editor and agent for the first time in New York, attended the christening of my friend’s son, and stopped by Wellesley College to give a talk with Sarah Warn during their LesBiTrans awareness week. Whew! As proof, here I am in Manhattan:

I had a great time meeting my agent, Laura Langlie, and my editor, Kate Sullivan. I also got to meet Cindy Eagan, Little, Brown’s executive editor and the mastermind behind the Gossip Girl books, as well as several other editors and staffers at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. They made me feel very welcome, first by heaping praise upon me (I told them I should have brought an audio recorder so I could tape it and play it back when I’m having a bad day), and then by offering me cupcakes and free books. I’m sold!

I also had a lot of fun back at Wellesley, where Sarah Warn and I were welcomed by friendly and enthusiastic students from Spectrum, the college’s queer student group. Back when we were in college, Sarah was the president of the organization, which was then known as WLBF (Wellesley Lesbians, Bisexuals and Friends). I should have known that Sarah’s BDOC days were not over with graduation, as she now runs the biggest lesbian site on the web (AfterEllen.com, duh!).

After Sarah and I had dinner with about a dozen students at the spectacular Lulu Chow Wang campus center (Sarah and I grumbled a bit about how we were stuck at Schneider Center in our days), we were driven through the drizzly night to Pendleton Hall, which now has a huge central atrium in it. (When we were there it hadn’t yet been renovated, and I took a lot of econ classes there.)

We were pleasantly surprised at how many students turned out to hear us talk about what we’ve done since Wellesley. We also took questions from the astute audience about lesbians/bi women in entertainment, and afterward I had the good fortune to be interviewed by the Wellesley News‘ arts editor about my book (my first book interview!). Here we are after the talk with a bunch of the students who came (I’m standing next to the queer students’ advisor, and you can see Sarah’s partner, Lori, poking her head up in the back):

All in all, it was a great trip and I had a wonderful time. Now that I’m back home and have recovered from those hundreds of work emails that were waiting for me, I’m getting ready to settle down with Ash and work on revisions. Cheers!