Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1970
WEBSITE: http://henrylien.com/
CITY: Hollywood
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1970, in Taiwan, China.
EDUCATION:Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, 2012.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Fiction writer.
AWARDS:Nominated for Nebula Awards.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short fiction to periodicals, including Asimov’s, Analog, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
SIDELIGHTS
Henry Lien is a young adult short fiction and novel writer in the science fiction and fantasy genre who also delves into Chinese subjects. He is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West and has published short stories in Asimov’s and Analog, earning several Nebula Award nominations. Lien was born in Taiwan and currently lives in Hollywood, California.
In 2018 Lien published the first novel in a series, Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword. In the country of Shin, fourteen-year-old Peasprout and her little brother Cricket are sent by their empress as exchange students to the land of Pearl to attend the Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword, where Peasprout is to practice and show off her skill in wu liu, a game combining martial arts and figure skating. Pearl is covered in a porcelain-like substance that makes it easy for people to skate on any surface. As the first student from Shin, Peasprout has a lot to prove, and she demonstrates her skill in intricate aerial fights and energetic wu liu sequences. But that becomes difficult when a series of vandalism incidents are discovered and immediately blamed on Peasprout amid accusations she is a spy. She has to prove her innocence, protect her brother, and dodge mean students who resent her.
In an interview online at Reading (As)(I)An (AM)Erica, Lien explained that Peasprout was loosely based on himself but with a female sensibility, “She is always the most original, most talented, most unforgettable person in the room. When you meet her, you will think about her later that day. She is also self-aggrandizing, deluded, extreme, a bit of a weirdo, and rather lonely. She’s pretty much me.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the book an auspicious and massively entertaining series opener and found the descriptions of the made-up sport wu liu elegant and cinematic, adding that “Lien crafts a memorable setting and cast while delivering a fast-paced, tense plot full of surprises.”
Eileen Makoff was adamant in School Library Journal that a scene in which Peasprout fights topless in just her underwear puts the book into the do-not-purchase category, “which is unfortunate because it might otherwise have found a home where high-octane action and adventure tales are appreciated.” Meanwhile, a Kirkus Reviews contributor commented on the book’s Asian-inspired fantasy, political intrigue, fast pace, and suspense, but also the inclusion of many plot elements. The contributor said that overall, “relationships portrayed are both refreshing and essential. An ambitious debut that may leave some readers scrambling to keep pace.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2018, review of Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword.
Publishers Weekly, January 29, 2018, review of Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword, p. 188.
School Library Journal, April, 2018, Eileen Makoff, review of Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword, p. 120.
ONLINE
Henry Lien Website, http://henrylien.com/ (July 9, 2018).
Reading (As)(I)An (AM)Erica, https://readingasiam.wordpress.com/ (May 20, 2018), author interview.
Hi, thanks for stopping by. I’m Henry Lien. I’m a speculative fiction writer. In case you don’t know, that’s a fancy way to say “science fiction and fantasy writer” without people thinking you have geek cooties.
My first novel, PEASPROUT CHEN, FUTURE LEGEND OF SKATE AND SWORD, came out from Holt/Macmillan in April 2018, edited by the sagacious Tiffany Liao. The sequel will be coming out in 2019. I am represented by the mighty Tina Dubois at ICM, as well as the benevolent Rich Green and Pier Nirandara at ICM for film/tv rights, and the perfectly upright Roxane Edouard at Curtis Brown U.K. for translation rights.
I write mostly children’s lit but also some adult stuff, mostly novels, but some short stories and songs, too. I like to write about very specific things, like Wu Liu (a sport I made up combining kung fu and figure skating), imperial court eunuchs, earthquakes, grandes dames of the Gilded Age, underwater gardening, and how to talk to dolphins.
I attended Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in 2012. It was deeply rad. I studied under George R.R. Martin, Chuck Palahniuk, Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Connie Willis, Stephen Graham Jones, and Mary Rosenblum. Since then, I have sold stories to magazines including Asimov’s, Analog, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and been nominated for a couple Nebulas.
Before becoming a writer, I worked as an attorney, fine art dealer, and college instructor. I was born in Taiwan. I live in Hollywood, CA.
Author Interview: Henry Lien
May 20, 2018InterviewFantasy, Middle Grade, Taiwanese
Hi again! Today’s Taiwanese author interview is with Henry Lien on his debut middle grade fantasy novel Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword.
Peasprout Chen Future Legend of Skate and Sword
The synopsis from Goodreads:
Welcome to Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword, where the blades are sharp and the competition is fierce.
Peasprout Chen dreams of becoming a legend of wu liu, the deadly and beautiful art of martial arts figure skating.
As the first students from the rural country of Shin to attend Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword, Peasprout and her little brother Cricket have some pretty big skates to fill. They soon find themselves in a heated competition for top ranking.
Tensions rise when the dazzling pearl buildings of the Academy are vandalized and outsider Peasprout is blamed for the attacks by her rivals … and even some friends.
Now, she must uncover the true vandal to ensure peace between Shin and Pearl – all while becoming a champion.
Now, buckle-in for this in-depth interview!
Q: To start off, what is your favorite Taiwanese food? (You’re allowed to pick more than one.)
A: What a great question! Food is identity. I choose dan-dan mian (peanut butter noodle). It’s classically Taiwanese, naturally vegan, appeals to young and old, and serves as an eminently charismatic introduction to Taiwanese food. It makes an appearance in the second PEASPROUT CHEN book. In fact, there are a lot of cameos by Taiwanese food in the series.
Runner up would be a traditional Taiwanese breakfast spread with ride porridge, three kinds of pickled vegetables, simmered tofu, fried crullers, warm soy milk, etc. Truly the best breakfast in the world and I will fight, kill, and toss into the sea anyone who says different.
Q: Tell us a little more about Peasprout and the world of Pearl beyond what’s in the synopsis.
A: Peasprout is a huge personality. She is courageous, has a huge heart, is expressive (when she’s not reticent), is warm (when she’s not being icy), makes grand, gorgeous, generous gestures, says things that no one else says, does things that no one else thinks to do or has the guts to do. She is always the most original, most talented, most unforgettable person in the room. When you meet her, you will think about her later that day. She is also self-aggrandizing, deluded, extreme, a bit of a weirdo, and rather lonely. She’s pretty much me.
It was excruciating to write such a deeply flawed character based so candidly on myself while forbidding myself from shading her more flatteringly. However, writing this way was an exercise in a) learning to applaud the parts of myself that I am proud of while; b) gazing at my flaws fully and hideously lit; and c) accepting that I’m perpetually a work in progress and will probably die that way. Sigh.
Regarding the world of Pearl, I could go on and on. It’s a world where you can skate on any surface, any rooftop, handrail, balustrade, etc. The entire city was built to accommodate this fictional sport of wu liu, which combines figure skating with kung fu. The city is essentially a figure skating, kung fu amusement park. It was my own personal parkour course on a city-scale, my own private Disneyland built from a brain-scan of what I liked and cared about. I feel like joy is pretty thin in science fiction/fantasy and the world in general these days. I wanted to create a city that while far from perfect, was in one primary way an exuberant expression of pure joy.
Q: Why the name Peasprout?
A: I wanted a name that that was gender-neutral, equally adorable in English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese, didn’t actually exist, and had a lot of personality. I wanted something that was as rich in Chinese/Taiwanese flavor as the names that Tolkien made up to express essential Englishness in his works.
Q: Given the history and current presence of Asian Americans in figure skating, from Michelle Kwan and Kristi Yamaguchi to today’s Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, and Alex and Maia Shibutani, it feels appropriate to have an Asian ice skating story. Did any of these skaters influence or inspire your story?
A: Massive influence! I don’t feel equipped to make generalizations about why there is such a high representation of Asian Americans in the sport. However, Kwan and Yamaguchi had to both deal with a lot of misstatements and nonsense regarding their Asian heritage in media coverage about their performances, endorsements, etc. That unfairness influenced the book since Peasprout herself is an immigrant and a dawning awareness of unfairness in the world is a classic theme in middle grade fiction.
On a more fundamental level, it felt right to write an Asian skating story because I always saw figure skating as the soulmate of traditional wushu (kung fu).
Q: What kinds of research did you do for this story, if any?
A: I took figure skating and kung fu lessons and was appalling at both. I wrote a blog about it, actually. If you want a good laugh, here’s a link: http://henrylien.com/writer-suffers-devastating-injuries-while-researching-kung-fu-figure-skating-childrens-book/ Despite the farcical tone, it’s actually 99% true. Read it and laugh at my woe.
For the worldbuilding, I also did a tremendous amount of research about language, culture, history, international relations, the complex history among Taiwan, China, and Japan, marine biology, architecture, engineering, meteorology, fashion, puberty, culinary fads, superstition, and on and on and on. A lot of that is happening under the hood but there’s so much solid research supporting the book that I in fact don’t really consider it fantasy. The fantastical worldbuilding is actually just exaggerated/extrapolated real stuff. I deliberately set out to write a fantasy that had no magic because I wanted to show that culture and history are in themselves magic enough.
For the characters and the interpersonal dynamics, I spent a lot of time in conversation with women including my sister, my agent, my editor, beta readers, etc., to make the representation of girls diverse and realistic, since I was writing from outside my own lived experience. I particularly wanted to examine the oft-bandied generalization that girls are socialized to be more relational and to develop instant relationships, positive or negative, with every other girl in their social unit, which instinctively felt super-sweeping and super-binary. Whether or not there is truth in this generalization, I wanted to explore the idea that not all girls are like this, want this, or agree with this generalization. Appreciating the differences of opinion about this idea was one of the things I spent the most time on.
Q: What would you say has been the hardest part of writing Peasprout Chen?
A: This question is hard to answer because everything about this book was hard. Perhaps the hardest thing was the puzzle nature of the plot. I was determined to write a puzzle plot that was as ambitious as “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban” or “Abre Los Ojos”. The engineering required to pull off such a plot while staying mindful of all the other elements that go into a book while serving my particular plot’s unusual requirements for pacing, frequency of clues, scaling of transparency of clues to a vast age range of potential readers, passage of time in the book’s world (mapped onto a rigid academic schedule and seasons that don’t match with our world’s seasons but have plot impacts), number of pages elapsed, etc., while also making the book as enjoyable on a second read after you learn its secrets, all while striving for a feeling of effortlessness in the choreography of story elements, was a staggering amount of work.
Q: I went and listened to the podcast of Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters, which was posted on Asimov’s Science Fiction (links: Part 1, Part 2). According to your site, Peasprout Chen’s story is a sequel to this story but also the first in a trilogy of its own. Why did you choose to Peasprout Chen’s story as the start for the series?
A: “Pearl Rehab Colony” was always intended as a contained experiment, a sort of proof of concept for the larger series. It’s told from the POV of Suki, the villain of the Peasprout Chen series. As such, it was intended as an experiment to test my powers of empathy and ventriloquism. However, Suki’s head is a cramped, claustrophobic, forbidding place in which to situate a viewpoint. I don’t think readers would have been able to bear spending 360 some pages in the head of such a nasty person. Peasprout is quite the pill herself but a different sort of pill, one whose edges break off as it goes down, one that sweetens while being broken apart. In some ways, Peasprout’s story is not the story of a winner, but of a loser, and it takes a tenderer, more complex narrator than Suki to bear such things with dignity and beauty. I wanted a narrator that showed that being vulnerable was not incompatible with being strong.
Henry Lien author headshot
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West, and his short fiction has appeared in publications like Asimov’s, earning multiple Nebula Award nominations. Born in Taiwan, Henry currently lives in Hollywood, California. Before becoming an author, Henry worked as an attorney, fine art dealer, and college instructor. His hobbies include vegan cooking, losing Nebula awards, and finding excuses to write and publicly perform science fiction/fantasy themed anthems. He is the author of Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword.
6/3/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1528052084006 1/3
Print Marked Items
Lien, Henry: PEASPROUT CHEN
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Lien, Henry PEASPROUT CHEN Henry Holt (Children's Fiction) $16.99 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-250-16569-5
A 14-year-old girl intends to become a legend of wu liu, the "beautiful and deadly art of martial skating!"
As an emissary in a goodwill exchange and the first Shinian student to attend Pearl Famous Academy of
Skate and Sword, Peasprout knows the stakes are high. All she has to do is outrank all of her peers, protect
her little brother, Cricket, and prove that she's not behind the mysterious attacks on campus buildings. She
should be up to the task ("I'm the smartest, most capable person I know"), but all is not quite as it seems.
Lien fills this Asian-inspired fantasy world with such richly layered histories and landscapes that readers
may feel lost at points; some may find themselves searching for supporting materials to contextualize the
political intrigue, though they will be grateful for the academy map. The narrative's swift pace and suspense
should help keep utter confusion at bay, though, and vividly described wu liu sequences capture the
exuberance and energy of the imagined sport. Although most characters, including Peasprout, evolve
unevenly but predictably, reticent classmate Doi strikes out on her own, overturning several tropes. In this
children's novel where all of the characters are presumably Asian or some fantasy equivalent, relationships
portrayed are both refreshing and essential.
An ambitious debut that may leave some readers scrambling to keep pace. (Fantasy. 10-14)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Lien, Henry: PEASPROUT CHEN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532700482/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5e0b9721.
Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532700482
6/3/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1528052084006 2/3
Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate
and Sword
Publishers Weekly.
265.5 (Jan. 29, 2018): p188+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword
Henry Lien. Holt, $16.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1250-16569-5
In this auspicious and massively entertaining series opener set in an Asian-inspired fantasy world, a young
woman pursues her dream of mastering wu liu, which combines figure skating and martial arts. Fourteenyear-old
Peasprout Chen and her younger brother, Cricket, are sent to the Pearl Famous Academy as part of
an exchange between their homeland of Shin and the city of Pearl, where they must prove themselves
worthy by passing numerous challenges. Hazards abound, including rival students, sabotage, and diplomatic
tensions. Peasprout attempts to protect her brother, avoid new enemies, prove her innocence when she's
accused of being a spy, and excel at her studies, but her greatest challenge may be overcoming her own
hubris and stubbornness. Building on a lushly described world introduced in several short stories, debut
novelist Lien crafts a memorable setting and cast while delivering a fast-paced, tense plot full of surprises.
The descriptions of wu liu are elegant and cinematic, and Peasprout's moves are as sharp as her tongue.
Peasprout Chen is a future legend, indeed. Ages 10-14. Agent: Tina Wexler, ICM Partners. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword." Publishers Weekly, 29 Jan. 2018, p. 188+. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526116596/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5bd6dd73. Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526116596
6/3/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1528052084006 3/3
LIEN, Henry. Peasprout Chen, Future
Legend of Skate and Sword
Eileen Makoff
School Library Journal.
64.4 (Apr. 2018): p120.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
LIEN, Henry. Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword. 336p. Holt. Apr. 2018. Tr $16.99. ISBN
9781250165695.
Gr 5-8--In this martial arts fantasy, the Empress Dowager has sent 14-year-old Peasprout Chen and her little
brother Cricket to Pearl, a city constructed from a porcelainlike substance that enables its residents to rely
on skating for transport. Peasprout Chen and Cricket must adjust to a new school, the Famous Academy of
Skate and Sword, where they confront cliques and mean kids while studying wu liu, a form of martial artsstyle
figure skating. Peasprout must also combat the rumors that she is a spy--rumors fueled by a wave of
sabotage that coincides with her arrival. Much of this tale mandates an enthusiastic suspension of disbelief
and an appreciation of over-the-top action sequences. In one scene, Peasprout swims in her skates; in
another, students fling their partners high enough into the air to engage in aerial combat over the rooftops.
In a problematic scene, however, a 14-year-old girl is left fighting in only her underpants, calling to mind a
long history of scantily clad female fighters introduced into film and prose to titillate rather than empower.
VERDICT The topless fight scene moves this book solidly into the do-not-purchase column, which is
unfortunate because it might otherwise have found a home where high-octane action and adventure tales are
appreciated.--Eileen Makoff, P.S. 90 Edna Cohen School, NY
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Makoff, Eileen. "LIEN, Henry. Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword." School Library
Journal, Apr. 2018, p. 120. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533409040/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=49c20e81. Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533409040