Cover Photo: part of a long wooden desk containing a black desktop computer, keyboard, speakers, clock, and coffee mug, with a black office chair set up in front of it
Photograph courtesy of the author

Where Vanessa Hua Writes

It’s my childhood desk, which I began using again after my father passed away and we moved in with my mother.

I didn’t want to give up my view of the oak-studded hills behind our house, but when we went through the hassle of rotating my desk and moving it to another wall, the move felt transformative. With this new orientation, I felt focused and energized—in part because it forced me to clean up my desk, but also because I’d invested in myself.

We scavenged the fancy chair from my husband’s office, which cleared its space during the lockdown last year.

Photograph courtesy of the author

The other night, while visiting a friend’s creative writing class, I pedaled away while answering questions, the students none the wiser. It whirs almost silently as I finish edits on my next novel—the first one I wrote, but the third book that will be published, in the spring of next year.

Photograph courtesy of the author


Vanessa Hua is the author of Deceit and Other Possibilities, A River of Stars, and the forthcoming novel Forbidden City.