The auspicious Year of the Boar began with rising hope for Asian-American writers at the San Francisco Writers Conference (SFWC) this past weekend.

Honey Yee for photo of Pam Chun with Senator Fong

The 330 attendees chanted "Kung Hey Fat Choy" with author Pam Chun, reassuring everyone's hope that the golden pig will bring each writer's manuscript to the door of a publisher.

The two and half day event took place at Mark Hopkins Hotel located on Nob Hill in San Francisco during Chinese New Year weekend, Feb 16-18. To be sure, the event was a hit. The buzz was high as authors travelled from as far as Israel to attend the conference in its fourth year.

"We had to cut off the registration at 310 attendees to ensure the size is small enough for networking," said Elizabeth Pomada, a San Francisco literary agent who is the founder of the conference. The conference has sold out for four years straight. Together with her husband, Mike Larsen, also a partner in the agency, and other members of the SFWC board, they launched the conference in 2004 to help emerging writers meeting agents and publishers.

Cheri Eplin for photo of Teresa with book at SFWC

The agency is the oldest literary agency in Northern California and was founded in 1972 to help writers launch careers.

"During my time of locating an agent and publisher, I had never heard of a writers' conference," Chun said. She sent out her manuscript to over five agents after she completed her first novel in the mid 90's. She received blanket rejections during her first round of submissions. Among them, the Larsen-Pomada Agency sent her a friendly rejection letter with a few editorial suggestions. Even though it took her three years to find an agent, the relationship with the Larsen-Pomada Agency who presented Pam Chun after her revision of the manuscript was a long term one.

Chun's The Money Dragon was an instant best seller when it was published in 2002. It remained on the Best Seller list in Hawaii for over nine months. Told from Chun's Grandmother's point of view, the novel offers a tale of Chun's great grand father, Lau Ah Leong, the wealthiest man in Hawaii at the time who founded of the local Chinatown. It is a portrait this Chinese-American tycoon, who had the power and influence to circumvent discriminatory U.S. laws and racial profiling. He however makes a tragic decision that shatters his family. The book includes authentic historical documents and photos of Ah Leong and his family as well as sheds light on the Chinese- American's life in early immigration history.

Chun herself received a Gubernatorial Commendation from the Governor of California for The Money Dragon upon the book's release. The Commendation states: "By sharing your talent and unique perspective, you have given greater insight into the cultural traditions of the Chinese-American community. Your dedication to artistic excellence has made a lasting impact on your community and on the literary field."

The book was named one of 2002's Best Books of Hawaii. In 2003 it received a Ka Palapala Po`okela Award from the Hawaii Book Publisher's Association for excellence in literature about Hawaii. Later the book was featured in a documentary, Hawaii's Chinatown. The documentary premiered in 2004 at the Hawaii International Film Festival and was later shown on Hawaii's PBS station in 2005. The Money Dragon was also made into an official historical textbook for Hawaii high schools.

In addition to the story of Ah Leong, Pam Chun revealed more family secrets in her second novel When Strange Gods Call. Her third novel is be read by potential publishers now and she is working on her fourth.

Pam, an excellent storyteller, presented a session at SFWC on Talking Story. She is enthusiastic about the prospects for innovative story telling in the 21st century, with all the new media and technology on the scene. She says the Internet lists storytelling venues, opportunities for readings from books, places, and provides a new forum for storytelling.

East Bay author Teresa LeYung Ryan also confirmed her belief in drawing storytelling material from the Asian-American community. Similar to the journey of Pam Chun, Ryan had a long struggle to find an agent for her debut novel, Love Made of Heart. It is a mother-daughter relationship novel, dealing the issue of mental illness of an aging mother. Six years of dedicated writing and three years of searching for an agent paid off. Love Made of Heart is now archived at the San Francisco History Center and recommended by the California School Library Association, the California Reading Association. The book is used in Advanced English-as-a-Second-Language classes.

Ryan presented a marketing session at the SFWC to help new authors pitch their books to an agent or acquire an editor at a publishing house. She finds helping other authors inspiring. She helps writers polish their manuscripts, find agents and publishers as well as gain recognition. Teresa serves the community by advocating compassion for mental illness and helping survivors of family violence find their own voices.

Both authors feel it is important to be active in the Asian-American community and take time to advise new Asian-American authors to attend writer's conferences such as SFWC and to approach publishers in a right way. Cross-cultural content are getting hot, as confirmed by Nathan Bransford, a literary agent of Curtis Brown Ltd in San Francisco and Christine Pride, associate editor of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, based in New York.

Throughout the four years of the SFWC, the number of attendees has grown by a third. The percentage of Asian writers, however, remains the same, about three percent. The organizers would like to see more Asian writers find their way into the mainstream of the American publishing world. The Speed Dating with Agents and Editors sessions help new writers to break into the industry.

As Elizabeth Pomada pointed out, "The purpose of the conference is to build bridges to better tomorrows." At the end of the bridge, an Asian author may see a major publisher smiling.

Ms. Bing Wei is a published author in both Chinese and English, after having worked as a news producer for Reuters TV and marketing manager for Dow Jones Newswires. A middle chapter of her first novel in English can be read here: http://chinaetiquette101-lifestyle.blogspot.com/2006/02/big-nose-and-me.html

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