The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau
A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.
A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.
Telling our own stories enlarges the circumference of our imaginations.
Our collective and individual identities are messy, amorphous, and impossible to define—but New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author HUA HSU says that’s a good thing. Telling our own complex stories complicates the narratives that are told about us, and opens up new worlds of possibility. Hua’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Stay True, which turned him into a “literary phenomenon” (The New York Times), was named one of The NYT’s Top 10 Books of the Year and won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. It touches on the immigrant experience and growing up Asian-American; but more than that, it’s an exploration of grief, pop culture, being young, and how friendship helps us discover who we are. Hua weaves his story with wider questions of diversity and culture, proving that “we aren’t alone, and we never have been.”
“The things that make Hua Hsu’s writing so singular—his searching grace, his rigorous sensitivity, his ability to make a living world out of the seemingly liminal—crystallize in this once-in-a-lifetime book.”
— Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Hua Hsu grew up desperate to build an identity of his own. But despite his countercultural interests, he struck up a friendship with Ken, a seemingly mainstream San Diego native whose Japanese-American family had been in the country for generations. Hua’s memoir Stay True is the poignant story of that friendship and the marks it left on his life, as well as a moving reflection on identity, self-discovery, connection, and the immigrant experience.
Stay True won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir, as well as the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. The National Book Critics Circles writes that Hua has “crafted a transformative addition to the Asian American canon and to the critical conception of what a memoir is capable of.” Stay True is one of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year, a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year, a Publishers Weekly best nonfiction book of the year, and a New Yorker best book of the year. Ocean Vuong, New York Times bestselling author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, said that Stay True is “writing at its most open, meticulous, forgiving and tender—which is to say, this is writing at its best.” Hua pays tribute to his friend by bringing their shared memories to life, elevating the entire memoir genre “with a kind of athletic ease” (Vanity Fair).
A staff writer at The New Yorker since 2017, and a contributor since 2014, Hua has covered a range of topics: from immigrant culture and student debt to hip-hop and affirmative action. In addition to Stay True, he is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific. He currently teaches at Bard College and has previously taught at Harvard and Vassar College. Hua serves on the executive board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Critical Minded, an initiative to create opportunities for cultural critics of color, and was formerly a fellow at the New America Foundation and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library.
Founder of Street Symphony 2018 MacArthur Genius TED Senior Fellow
Social Historian, Cultural Critic & Community Organizer Author of We Gon’ Be Alright and Can't Stop Won't Stop
Renowned Cultural Critic Author of Ten Books, Including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
Award-Winning Black Transgender Activist Author of The Risk It Takes to Bloom Co-Founder of the Transgender Week of Visibility and Action
Celebrity chef Bestselling author of Fresh Off the Boat Writer and director of Boogie and Tuna Melt
New York Times Bestselling Author Of All Boys Aren’t Blue & We Are Not Broken Emmy Nominee LGBTQIA+ Activist
Author of instant New York Times bestseller Secret City Tablet Magazine columnist Award-winning journalist
New York Times Bestselling Author Of All Boys Aren’t Blue & We Are Not Broken Emmy Nominee LGBTQIA+ Activist
Civil Rights Attorney Award-winning author of Black Was the Ink Former civil rights attorney at the US Department of Justice
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