Ep 13. Ken Liu, Hugo Award-Winning Author on His Most Ambitious Work of Fiction

"Very few people can say that they wanted to play with a whole world and to invent it, and to make it real and to build it and to tell stories in it…I got to do all of that and to tell the story I wanted to tell. It makes me feel like I didn’t come into this universe and leave empty-handed. I left something behind that I thought is the best I could do, and that’s pretty darn awesome.”

Ken Liu is a Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author of speculative fiction. His short story "The Paper Menagerie” is the first work of fiction to win all three of science fiction’s major awards: the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award. His latest book Speaking Bones, the final installment in his epic fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty just came out on June 21. The 10-year saga is the culmination of all his effort as a writer where he has put all of himself – his knowledge, his understanding of the world and his life experiences – into the massive work of fiction. It’s likely his magnum opus and how Ken’s choosing to leave his mark on the world.  

In this episode, Ken talks about his Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning short story “The Paper Menagerie” and how it relates to the current political climate in America | What makes a piece of fiction resonate with readers | His career choices and how he got to become a full-time writer | On being an autodidact: how he taught himself to write | The importance of experimentation as a writer | What makes a writer worth reading | An introduction to The Dandelion Dynasty series and Speaking Bones | How it feels to have completed possibly his most important work as a writer

To learn more about Ken Liu and to see pictures from the interview, visit https://www.sissi-wang.com/episodes/ep-13-ken-liu

Ken Liu: https://kenliu.name/

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