Christina Li is the author of the middle grade novels Clues to the Universe and Ruby Lost and Found, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Children’s Literature, as well as the forthcoming teen novel True Love and Other Impossible Odds. At any given time she is probably daydreaming about characters and drinking too much jasmine green tea. She grew up in the Midwest and California but now calls New York home.

I had the opportunity to interview Christina, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself? 

Thank you so much for having me! I am the author of children’s and young adult books (three out so far!): Clues to the Universe, Ruby Lost and Found, and the most recently published True Love and Other Impossible Odds, from Quill Tree Books / HarperCollins. 

What can you tell us about your latest book, True Love and Other Impossible Odds? What was the inspiration for this project?

True Love is a queer sapphic romance / contemporary about this college freshman and math major, Grace Tang, who invents an algorithm that pairs people up with their perfect romantic match, only to increasingly question her preconceived notions on love and identity. 

The inspiration for this project was my college had the Stanford Marriage Pact, which was a survey that people took to match them up to a backup “marriage” match based on compatibility in the survey answers. It was such a hoot on our college campus. I always wanted to write a book abut that, and was also going through my own personal revelations around love and romance and identity, and then, the character of Grace popped into my head. 

As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically young adult fiction and romance? 

I think that since I grew up on young adult, I always gravitated toward that category. True Love is a college romance, and I wrote the first draft of that book when I was in college, and figuring out a lot of things about my own identity and about love, and so naturally writing was the most intuitive avenue of expressing some of those thoughts. There is something so earnest about both romance and the coming of age experience that I always find myself writing about those topics, so naturally they intersected. 

How would you describe your writing process?

I would say that I have “seasons” of writing. I don’t write every day, but rather I have stretches of my life where I do nothing but draft, times when I do nothing but edit, and times when I do neither and rest. 

Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?

There are two books that I felt seen by and that I owe a lot to. The first is The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and the second is Ash by Malinda Lo. Both books feature queer main characters and were really influential to me as a reader and as a writer. I think these days I am really trying to get into poetry, and so I’ve been very moved by Richard Siken’s poetry collections as of late. 

As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration in general? 

Authors I love and always will admire: Grace Lin, Nina LaCour, Ocean Vuong. My friends, too. They write the most beautiful books. 

What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging? 

I love drafting and editing equally. I love the euphoria of typing The End. I love chewing on a kernel of a plot idea until it collides with another and becomes a full-fleshed book concept. Which is the roundabout way of saying that I love it all. Sure, there are frustrating parts (deadline, being stuck on a plot point, publishing anxieties) but the fun parts of the job really supersede all. 

Many authors would say one of the most challenging parts of writing a book is finishing one. What strategies would you say helped you accomplish this?

This is a really interesting question because I do have that fear! All the time. I do think that nowadays, I am better prepared to write my books. I almost always have the ending plotted out before I even start drafting. It reassures me to know what I’m working toward.

Aside from your work, what are some things you would want others to know about you?

That I’m from the Midwest. I’ve lived in a lot of places, and now reside in New York, but I’m quite proud of where I came from. 

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

I always wish that someone would ask me about the intersection of divinity and love in True Love. Grace, my main character, is a formerly very religious person who is experiencing a crisis of faith at the same time she is exploring her sexuality at college. It felt natural to write about those two in conversation with one another because Grace is a very logical person, and both faith and love are both things that, at times, defy logic and rationality. One thing I love doing in my books is that I love creating amalgamations of themes and exploring the conversations between those themes (science and art in Clues, memory and loss in Ruby, and now love and religion in True Love).

What advice might you have to give for other aspiring writers?

My best advice I have is to read widely in the genre that you are trying to write in. My other piece of advice is that so much good advice is free and on the internet – some of my best learning moments have been reading interviews with other authors, or listening to podcasts, or reading blogs. 

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

I have a book coming out next March that’s my adult literary debut, called The Manor of Dreams. I like to pitch it as Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets Mexican Gothic, or The Haunting of Bly Manor meets Knives Out. It’s a book about two rival families that fight to inherit a house that they don’t know is haunted – until it’s too late. 

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

The books I’m obsessed with: Off With Their Heads by Zoe Hana Mikuta, This is Me Trying by Racquel Marie, How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow, The Last Love Song by Kalie Holford. Books I’m really excited about: The Blonde Dies First by Joelle Wellington, and The Loudest Silence by Sydney Langford!