Join us for an event with award-winning author Claire Jia, discussing her debut novel Wanting. Joining Claire in conversation is acclaimed writer Jenevieve Ting. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store’s 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of Wanting here.

ACCESSIBILITY:

Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.

ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at events@strandbooks.com by June 27 to request.

Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.

For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact events@strandbooks.com

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A searing debut novel of envy, longing, and regret across three lives and two countries that asks how far we’ll go for a friendship, a romance, a dream.

Ye Lian is thriving in Beijing. She has a well-paid job, a nice boyfriend, and plans to marry and move into a luxury high-rise apartment. She’s wanting for nothing–until her childhood best friend, Luo Wenyu, comes whirling back into her life after a decade in California with seemingly everything–a successful career as an influencer, a millionaire American fiancé, and a bespoke mansion in the Beijing suburbs–throwing Lian’s own reliable choices into high relief.

As the two women rekindle their friendship, Wenyu reveals a shocking secret about a past love that pushes Lian to question her own relationship. A few neighborhoods away, aging architect Song Chen is forced to confront his own past and the dissolution of his marriage as he’s tasked with building Wenyu’s dream home. And when the dark side of Wenyu’s enviable life emerges and threatens everything Lian and Wenyu have built for themselves, they must make a choice between the stable known and the frightening unknown that may have devastating and unexpected consequences.

In girlhood memories and karaoke afternoons in Xidan Square, in aspirational YouTube channels and billboard ads, in private hotel rendezvous and secret WeChat messages, Claire Jia’s debut novel is a love letter to friendship; a powder keg of impossible, interwoven desires; a siren song that explores why, even as it destroys us, we always want more.

Photo credit: Joe Abriatis

Claire Jia is a writer from Illinois. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Rumpus, Reductress, and more. She writes for television and video games, including the 2024 Peabody Award-winning We Are OFK. She lives in Los Angeles with her friends. Wanting (Tin House) is her debut novel.

Jenevieve Ting is a writer from California who now lives in New York. They were a finalist for the 2020 Stories x Not a Cult Award for Poetry, have received support from Tin House, and their work appears or will appear in the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Haymarket Books, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Indiana Review, The Offing, Fugue, Almanac Journal, and elsewhere.