We were lucky to catch up with Irene Jiang recently and have shared our conversation below.

Irene, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I never used to consider myself a literary writer. I’ve always wanted to write for television and imagined myself in the writers’ room of some campy, irreverent sci-fi show with great cast chemistry. In 2023, I moved to Los Angeles in search of a TV writing job. I had some great generals, and one, “If this show goes, I’ll call you.” Then, the entertainment industry imploded.

There’s this idea I’ve been crazy about for years, which I tried to write as a screenplay several times before realizing it was a novel. Of course I thought I was never going to write it, because I’d self-talked myself into definitely not being a novelist. I’d never thought of myself as “good enough” to write anything literary. But when an industry contact (who couldn’t offer me a job) suggested I write a novel while things recovered, I thought, why not? Even if it’s bad, the process would help me get to know my story better, and maybe I’d get some intellectual property in the bargain. And at this time, I craved more than anything a sense of creative fulfillment that screenwriting wasn’t providing. The mission became to build my relationship with the craft of writing, win condition unknown.

It took me about six months to finish the first draft. I wrote it with the blind confidence of a mediocre white man, fulfilling a resolution among my BIPOC women writer friends, and when I was done, I realized I had to figure out what to do with it.

Even at this point in my journey, I didn’t think of myself as a literary writer. I didn’t have an MFA (still don’t) and had no experience in the realm of fiction. But I knew I wanted to go the traditional publishing route, and to get there, I’d have to prove myself as a fiction writer somehow. So I decided to try my hand at short stories, because again, why not? Even if they never went anywhere, they’d be good practice.

My first flash fiction story was accepted at the first magazine I submitted to, Flash Fiction Magazine. I’m not a “signs from the universe” kind of person, but this felt like someone put neon signs along the Yellow Brick Road reading “this way to creative fulfillment and external validation.”

So I continued writing and submitting, and though my journey was paved with rejections, there was always the odd acceptance to boost my spirits and encourage me to keep going. It’s been a year since I started writing short stories, almost two years since I started writing fiction. I landed a sci-fi story at Uncharted, and a literary piece just came out in the spring print issue of The Pinch. My novel is still in revisions, but the first draft won me my first writing residency at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s palatial home in the Hampshires. And sitting at my desk in Edith Wharton’s boudoir or flipping through the pages of her personal books in the library, it became impossible to deny that I had in fact become a literary writer.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have always primarily been a screenwriter, but now I’d also count myself as a fiction writer. All writing is about telling a story, and if you can do that well, you can write well across media.

I’ve lucked my way into a lot of really cool jobs. My first gig after college was a documentary filmmaking Fulbright to Morocco, where I lived with a circus. After that, I landed in food journalism and got to eat burgers for a living. But my heart has always been in narrative storytelling, so a few years ago, I made the transition to screenwriting and became a reader and judge for a few film and theater festivals. I started writing fiction even more recently, but fiction’s been great to me.

I discovered that I like to write about unruly women, migration, and aspiration. I love delving into the most distressing topics: systemic injustice, mental health, sexual assault, death, distress, misery. A therapist friend told me that if a patient had written one of my stories, he’d put them on suicide watch. But I’m generally a very happy, upbeat person. I think this obsession with the darkness comes from my comfortable place in the light. My parents, who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, both inured me to misery and gave me an unending fascination with the worst moments of humanity.

I firmly believe that a rich life enriches one’s writing, and I’ve used that belief to excuse my spending time developing some very niche interests. I’m a polyglot; I went viral in Morocco for speaking native-level darija. I love solving puzzles and making games. I’m also — and this is the weirdest one — really obsessed with mushrooms. Not the psychedelic ones — I’ve foraged wild culinary mushrooms for nearly a decade. I go with my parents, who have their spots. I love identifying them as much as eating them. The deadly ones especially interest me. None of this has played an explicit role in my writing, but I’m certain one day it might.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The primary driver for most writers, I think, is the desire to be heard. It’s helpful if you have an irrepressible urge to write, which I do, because reaching the level where you are heard — published, awarded, otherwise recognized — requires a lot of work. Beyond that, each writer has individual reasons for wanting to be heard, and most of it comes from wanting to be seen ourselves. I have a very talented friend who wants to spotlight sexy and capable butch women. She is, indeed, a sexy and capable butch woman. I’m a small Asian woman, often perceived as vulnerable, with a lot of anger towards the system and people who abuse power. That colors who my protagonists are and what my stories are about. In terms of mission, I hope my stories inspire empathy. I like to amplify less-heard voices and force my readers to inhabit perspectives they previously haven’t considered.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

The best thing a fellow writer did for me was introduce me to the “100 Rejections A Year” framework. It’s a spreadsheet, widely available on a lot of writing websites, that allows you to track your submissions with the goal of getting one hundred rejections in a year. The most important thing it does is reframe rejection as a goal in and of itself. It’s helped me focus on what I can control (writing and submitting) rather than what I can’t control (acceptances and awards). It encourages you to view success as a byproduct of just doing the work. A lot of writers get discouraged early on because they don’t realize how much rejection is normal. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.irenejiang.com
• Instagram: @burgerbint