Women and Children First Virtual Author Reading: SEEING GHOSTS by Kat Chow

Join us on Women & Children FIrst's Crowdcast Channel for a reading with Kat Chow in celebration of her memoir, Seeing Ghosts. For this event, Kat will be in conversation with Lillian Li.

Kat Chow has always been unusually fixated on death. She worried constantly about her parents dying---especially her mother. A vivacious and mischievous woman, Kat's mother made a morbid joke that would haunt her for years to come: when she died, she'd like to be stuffed and displayed in Kat's future apartment in order to always watch over her.

After her mother dies unexpectedly from cancer, Kat, her sisters, and their father are plunged into a debilitating, lonely grief. With a distinct voice that is wry and heartfelt, Kat weaves together a story of the fallout of grief that follows her extended family as they emigrate from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America. Seeing Ghosts asks what it means to reclaim and tell your family’s story: Is writing an exorcism or is it its own form of preservation? The result is an extraordinary new contribution to the literature of the American family, and a provocative and transformative meditation on who we become facing loss.

Kat Chow is a writer and a journalist. She was a reporter at NPR, where she was a founding member of the Code Switch team. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and on Radiolab, among others. She’s one of Pop Culture Happy Hour’s fourth chairs. She’s received a residency fellowship from the Millay Colony and was an inaugural recipient of the Yi Dae Up fellowship at the the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat.

Lillian Li is the author of the novel Number One Chinese Restaurant, which was an NPR Best Book of 2018, and a finalist for the Women’s Prize. Her work has been published in the New York Times, One Story, and Travel & Leisure. Originally from the D.C. metro area, she lives in Ann Arbor.