Stories Without Borders

Some conversations make you rethink what a “kids’ book” is allowed to hold, and this is one of them. I’m joined by critically acclaimed storyteller Emily Barth Isler, author of the middle grade novels Aftermath and The Color of Sound and the picture book Three Pieces of Broken Glass, to talk about writing for young readers when the real world feels too heavy to explain and too urgent to ignore.  W...

We talk with author, educator, and survivor-advocate Dr. Winnie M. Li about addressing trauma through fiction without letting it define a whole life or career. We dig into how the media shapes public narratives about sexual assault, why art can build community, and what it takes to maintain balance and perspective in a creative life.  • Winnie’s path from film industry work to novels and activism ...

You can feel it when a writer has lived inside their questions, and David Yoon has. We sit down with the New York Times bestselling author of Frankly in Love, Super Fake Love Song, Version Zero, and City of Orange to talk about what happens when identity, family, and ambition all tug on you at once and why the “hard” work is often the honest work. We start with David’s origin story as a latchkey k...

What if you could mail one page of hard-won wisdom back in time? We close our first season by stitching together intimate, practical letters to younger selves from our Season 1 slate of bestselling authors and advocates. The result is a generous chorus on patience, courage, and the long game of becoming—told through personal stories that feel both specific and startlingly universal. You’ll hear ho...

A life-changing writing class, a fierce love for language, and a new mom’s clarity: that’s the spark behind Nicola Yoon’s leap from engineering and finance to bestselling novelist. We sit down with the author of Everything, Everything, The Sun Is Also a Star, Instructions for Dancing, and One of Our Kind to unpack how vulnerability, precision, and curiosity power stories that become empathy machin...

Glamour can distract, but it can also reveal what truly matters. We sit down with Alexandra Brown Chang, the New York Times bestselling author of By Invitation Only, to explore a Parisian debutante world where status is loud, traditions are ancient, and friendship ends up being the quiet force that wins. Alexandra pulls back the curtain on the real-life experiences and customs that inspired the no...

Joy doesn’t always arrive on schedule. For Nydia Armendia-Sánchez, it showed up when she started writing the stories her kids couldn’t find on the shelf—tales that honor migration, bilingual families, and the quiet power of a mother’s voice. We sit down with Nydia to trace her path from early art student to award-winning children’s author, and the moment she chose to turn family history into Not F...

A six-year-old lands in a new country without knowing the alphabet and discovers, by third grade, that reading feels like magic. That spark became Cindy Pon’s compass as she wrote underdogs who straddle worlds, crafting YA stories that welcome readers who’ve never seen themselves on a cover. We sit down with Cindy to trace that path—from Silver Phoenix, a Chinese-inspired fantasy that arrived when...

Two truths drive this conversation: images shape policy, and classrooms shape futures. Hollyn speaks with actress, activist, and storyteller Estefanía Rebellón—refugee from Cali, Colombia and co-founder of Yes We Can World Foundation—to unpack how a consent-first media ethic and year-round education are changing the lives of migrant children at the U.S.–Mexico border. Estefanía takes us from her f...

A single book magically changed a life. Hollyn talks to award-winning author Alda P. Dobbs about her childhood spent dodging a harsh kindergarten teacher and resisting English to the night she read The Catcher in the Rye straight through, discovering that stories can carry a person across borders without moving an inch. From there, we trace the spine of her Petra Luna novels to the heartbeat of he...

A revolution uproots a family. A kid grows up between languages and continents. Years later, a studio note says, “cut all the gay characters,” and a writer decides he’s done waiting for permission. Our talk with Abdi Nazemian is a global tour—from Tehran to Paris, Toronto, New York, and LA—and an illustration of how storytelling can hold all those lives in one place. Abdi talks about how reading s...

What if a 13-year-old trained an AI on fairy tales—and the world learned back? Hollyn sits down with New York Times bestselling author and filmmaker Abigail Hing Wen for our first live taping at Annabelle's Book Club LA to unpack The Vale, Abigail's middle grade debut about a boy who builds an AI-generated realm and then has to save it when reality starts to glitch. From dual timelines a...

NYT-bestselling author Abigail Hing Wen discusses writing the LOVEBOAT, TAIPEI trilogy, producing LOVE IN TAIPEI for Paramount+ (and Netflix), and directing her first short film THE VALE: ORIGINS (starring Lea Salonga), a prequel to her new middle-grade novel THE VALE. Lightning Round topics: favorite movies, superpowers, whether cereal is a soup, guilty pleasure dance songs, and fun trivia about...