Real Fiction Radio Broadcast: February 3, 2021 WERA (96.7 FM) Streaming- wera.fm
Te-Ping Chen is a fiction writer & journalist whose debut collection of short stories, Land of Big Numbers, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 2, 2021.
In Te-Ping Chen’s debut story collection THE LAND OF BIG NUMBERS, China doesn’t feel like vast country of a billion people but of a family, a young woman, a brother. The characters strive, pursue dreams and struggle against authoritarian government and societal expectations.
REAL FICTION explores the intersection of how real and imaginary forces fuel stories. THE LAND OF BIG NUMBERS is a book that hits this mark like a bullseye. The stories take inspiration from real life, with doses of magical realism, pulling from modern and ancient traditions. These fictional stories are crafted by a reporter with the Wall Street Journal who spent years working in China writing about how ordinary citizens work and live.
Te-Ping Chen's fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Granta and Tin House. She is a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Philadelphia who was previously based in Beijing and Hong Kong.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-could-have-been-a-very-different-country-a-search-for-family-reveals-a-lost-moment-11551974189