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PEN/Open Book Award Finalist
MOTT STREET is named a 2024 PEN/America Open Book Award Finalist! This award is for outstanding books of any literary genre written by authors of color. Formerly the Beyond Margins Award, the judges of the Open Book Award are committed to racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. Ava Chin and her…
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Best Nonfiction Book Award
MOTT STREET, an American Library Association (ALA) Notable book of 2024, wins the 2024 CALA Best Book Award for Adult Nonfiction! It shares the honor with Fae Myenne Eng’s searing memoir ORPHAN BACHELORS. Ava and the whole team feel so much gratitude for the Chinese American Librarians Association and the ALA for showing MOTT STREET…
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New in Paperback!
Look what comes out April 23, 2024! This warm and inviting illustration of Mott Street is reminiscent of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Angela’s Ashes. The handwriting-style font, which was used on the hardcover, works splendidly here too (Note: it’s the same font on the cover of Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts, a book…
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Mott Street Book Tour & Launch
MOTT STREET hit the ground running this year with tour dates in more than 7 different cities, including San Francisco, L.A., Boston, Seattle, Austin, TX and Miami, with several events in Ava’s hometown of NYC. It’s been a wonderful, wild ride. Ava can’t thank everyone enough for coming out. She met new friends and got…
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And the reviews are…truly splendid!
We are a month shy of pub date for Mott Street (April 25th!), but already the reviews are coming in strong. In starred reviews, Publisher’s Weekly called it “Stunning,” and Kirkus Reviews described it as “Elegantly written…a lively memoir that…helps us understand the troubled history of our nation.”
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Winter Book & Author Fest
Penguin Random House + Library Journal introduce next season’s newest books at virtual book festival I’m thrilled to take part in the PRH + Library Journal book festival tomorrow, Thursday, Dec. 8th, 2022. They have a stellar line up, including keynote speaker Joy Harjo, and some of my favorite writers like Gina Apostol and Victor…
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Goodreads Giveaway
Update: Two thousand seven hundred and twenty-two readers (2,722!) entered the Goodreads giveaway for a chance to read MOTT STREET. Congratulations to the 15 lucky winners. It gave me such a thrill to see their names on the site. Major kudos to: Linda, Angela, Mandybeth, Paige, Laura (auntieyorgareads), Jamie Ray, Betty, Carlos Giron, Jamie, Nesie,…
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Eating Wildly
Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love, and the Perfect Meal (S&S, 2014) reveals how foraging and the DIY-food movement helped Ava Chin to heal up from the disappointments of an estranged relationship with her father, and taught her important lessons in self-reliance. After the loss of a beloved family member, she immerses herself in urban…
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About AVA CHIN
AVA CHIN, a 5th generation Chinese American New Yorker, is the author of the nonfiction narrative MOTT STREET: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (April 2023, Penguin Press), an intimate portrayal of the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act laws (1882-1943) on four generations of Chin’s family as they attempted to lay…
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Mott Street
* TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 * San Francisco Chronicle’s Favorite Nonfiction * Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2023 * Library Journal Best Memoir and Biography of 2023 * One of Elle’s Best Memoirs of 2023 (So Far) * An ALA Notable Book * From the winner of the M.F.K. Fisher Book Prize and a…