VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
CHEUNG: This was not quite at a reading—more like reading adjacent—but one year at the Festival of Books I was drying my hands in the green room restroom when a big-time, famous author approached me, smiling. I was startled because we’d been introduced briefly by a mutual friend once, but I didn’t expect her to remember me.
“I just want you to know,” she said, “I loved your reading at your panel yesterday.”
“I wasn’t on a panel yesterday,” I said.
“Of course you were,” she said. “I was there.”
“I assure you, it wasn’t me.”
“But I saw you!”
We were still standing awkwardly in front of the paper towels, so I excused myself and walked away. Later, when I thought about all the panels that weekend, I finally understood the confusion. She thought I was Yiyun Li.
Yennie Cheung holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside-Palm Desert. Her work has been published in such places as The Los Angeles Times, Word Riot, decomP magazinE, and The Best Small Fictions 2015. An LA native, she’s currently working on a nonfiction book about Downtown Los Angeles.
Come see Yennie read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, August 19 at 7:30pm