Making Light with Julia Kuo

Julia Kuo (00:00):
Actually, glowworms are cannibalistic and they're territorial. So you know, what we saw was like, oh, spaced out dots, like beautiful. And they're spaced out because if they get too close they will all cannibalize each other <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (00:12):
I love this.

Julia Kuo (00:12):
Yeah. Nature is not all pretty and soft.

Laura Maylene Walter (00:20):
Welcome to Page Count, presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. This podcast celebrates authors, illustrators, librarians, booksellers, literary advocates and readers in and from the state of Ohio.

Laura Maylene Walter (00:36):
I'm your host Laura Maylene Walter, the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow And author of the novel BODY OF STARS. Today we're joined by author and illustrator, Julia Kuo, her picture book, LUMINOUS: LIVING THINGS THAT LIGHT UP THE NIGHT, won this year's Floyd Pick book award, which is awarded by the Choose to Read Ohio Advisory Council in memory of children's literature, expert advocate and librarian Floyd Dickman. We're going to discuss bioluminescence, the mysteries of the open ocean, squids, and glowworms, and jellyfish, and making our own light. Julia, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today.

Julia Kuo (01:13):
Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Laura Maylene Walter (01:15):
Well, before we dive down into the deep sea, I thought we could start a bit closer to home and discuss your Ohio connection. I believe you've lived all over, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds as though you really lived all over the place. So I was wondering if you could start just by telling us a bit about your Ohio connection and how Ohio factors into your story.

Julia Kuo (01:36):
Yeah, absolutely. So I lived in Cleveland for two separate stints. The first one was for five years, beginning in 2007. That was straight out of the school. I went there to work for American Greetings. And then in 2018 I went back again with my now husband for three years. Living in Cleveland was very formative for me as a young adult. I had grown up in LA, always thought I was going to move back to like a big city and never really experienced a place like Cleveland. And it was eye-opening in that, you know, here was this city where every bit of love and investment was appreciated and you know, given back. And I think that kind of shaped the stories that I wanted to tell the people that I had access to, you know, urban planners, journalists and community organizers...That kind of taught me that art could be for a lot more than what I knew at that moment in time.

Julia Kuo (02:33):
So, you know, LUMINOUS, I think that the connection might be a little less direct than some other, you know, public art or murals I've made. However, I didn't have fireflies in Southern California. And so I do remember that the first week or so of living in Cleveland I was going on a jog around some lakes and I saw all of these fireflies light up in this little like, I want to call it a meadow, but it really was probably like a median <laugh> and there was a deer standing there, which to me at the time was like, oh goodness, wildlife. It was just such a magical moment. And later on I did see some pretty spectacular firefly displays. One was in a field in Illinois later on, but that's an access point for many people in the U.S. to buy luminescence.

Laura Maylene Walter (03:21):
Yeah.

Julia Kuo (03:22):
You know, I guess I can make that little connection that way.

Laura Maylene Walter (03:25):
I love that. And you're reminding me of the magic of fireflies. I grew up in Pennsylvania where a short drive away you could be driving through farmland and I remember some summer nights it would be really dark, no street lights and just fields, corn fields full of fireflies.

Julia Kuo (03:41):
Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (03:42):
Well I would love to talk about LUMINOUS, which is such a gorgeous book. And listeners, I will of course be linking to the book so that you could check it out a little bit more. I was wondering if you could back up a little bit and tell us about your career as a children's book illustrator, how you got into that and then how you came to also write.

Julia Kuo (04:01):
LUMINOUS is the second book that I've written, but it's the first nonfiction. So it also still feels so new to me. Even now I'm working on the follow up to LUMINOUS and every day I'm just reminded that writing is this pretty entirely new skill that I'm still trying to get a grasp on. So yes, I did come to publishing through illustration. I've always worked as an illustrator, first for American Greetings, doing greeting cards and then a little bit more into editorial, so for things like newspapers and magazines. When I went freelancing full-time in around 2010, I did my first book. It was a chapter book for the author Jenny Han. She's pretty well known.

Laura Maylene Walter (04:42):
Yeah.

Julia Kuo (04:43):
You know, FOR ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED...Netflix movies now. And so, you know, that editor took a chance on me, brought me on, and the agent who represented Jenny Han saw that I was un-agented and asked if I wanted representation. At the time I had no idea the significance of this or really who this woman was. She's a formidable agent. I was so lucky to have this connection and to enter the world that way. And from there I went on to illustrate children's books, always for authors. And some specialty books and some book covers. But really learned through this process that making picture books could be the bread and butter for an illustrator. And in fact is a very stable way to live as a freelancer in a profession that is not stable.

Laura Maylene Walter (05:32):
Yeah, I love to hear any writer calling any part of their job stable. We love to hear that on this podcast.

Julia Kuo (05:38):
Right. It's still an illusion, you know, but like I think maybe relative to editorial or other forms of illustration, it feels like we're taken care of. And then, so my agent, her name's Emily van Beek and she's at Folio Literary, she's always kind of gently nudged me in the direction of aspiring to author illustrator books. And so, you know, it's been a long time. If I started in 2010, my first book probably came out in 2022 or first written book. So it was a process. But I feel very lucky to be working on a new skill, to be learning something totally different and seeing how it affects my illustrations. You know, something that I know very well.

Laura Maylene Walter (06:18):
This is really useful I think for any aspiring writers or illustrators listening to this, everyone just keep in mind you do need an agent if you want to be traditionally published, whether you are writing the children's book, illustrating it or both and that things can take a long time to develop different parts of your career. Yeah. And you also reminded me, just as an aside that we are both with Folio. My agent is Erin Harris who's at Folio. So.

Julia Kuo (06:44):
Very nice.

Laura Maylene Walter (06:44):
Shout out to Folio, we love them <laugh>.

Julia Kuo (06:47):
Right. We're we're literary cousins. There we go.

Laura Maylene Walter (06:49):
Right, right. So tell us about LUMINOUS. How did this book get started and tell us a bit about the book. Give us your pitch for what young readers can expect when they encounter LUMINOUS.

Julia Kuo (07:02):
To describe the book to anyone who hasn't seen it before, LUMINOUS is a book about bioluminescence. It kind of uses the frame of this mother and child walking in the dark and there's two levels of text. So the main level of text it's pretty simple. You know, it's like when it's dark out we need light to see...what if your body could make its own light? And it's kind of this meandering like through the idea of different bioluminescent forms and creatures and it kind of ends with a very open ended like what if you could make your own light and then on a deeper level it has the subtext that introduces you to more of the science behind these animals. Who are these animals but maybe more importantly, why do they light up? And so we kind of go through foxfire, angler fish, glowworms, and some creatures you may not have heard of like dragonfish or certain types of jellyfish and their different mechanisms.

Julia Kuo (07:57):
So the way that I came to this book was pretty unusual. I had had these experiences where I went with my family to New Zealand and we saw glowworms. And then we went to Northern California and kayaked in bioluminescent waters and I went back to Taiwan and did this moonlight hike where we found foxfire and it looks like a piece of wood that's just sitting on the ground that's glowing.

Laura Maylene Walter (08:19):
Wow.

Julia Kuo (08:19):
And these experiences, they were just so other worldly that I was making my own art for it. You know, that's something that I've always tried to make time for in my life. The first thing I made was this little animated video with a friend who had also had his own experience. After that I did a gallery show and the editor for Greystone books saw my images and said, you have these existing images, would you like to make a book out of it? You know, she saw it and she kind of came to me and pitched that idea and I was like, of course I would love to do that. I had actually worked with her at a different publisher in a similar way where she had seen paintings that I made and that became a board book.

Laura Maylene Walter (08:58):
So you're doing the work that speaks to you, you were so compelled by these experiences of seeing bioluminescence in person and that led in a roundabout way to this book. So I really love that. The book is so gorgeous listeners, it's a dark background, so black pages to really let the illustration of these lit up creatures shine through. So it's really wonderful. Did you have maybe a favorite kind of creature or function for the bioluminescence you would like to share with us?

Julia Kuo (09:28):
I had to include the ones that I had experienced personally. That was not really even a question.

Laura Maylene Walter (09:33):
The glowworms really intrigued me. What was that like seeing them in person?

Julia Kuo (09:37):
You know, the cave was so large and it was so dark that when we went in via boat and you looked up, it really seemed like you're looking at the night sky. Because there are all these like what you would think are stars. And actually that is the intention. That's like the mechanism that these glowworms are using. Insects will fly into the cave, they'll want to get out, they'll see what they think is a nice sky and fly up towards it and they get caught in these sticky strands. So the sticky strands that reflect this light are the way that the glowworms eat. It worked on me. It looked like a night sky <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:11):
Right. You're lucky you're not a bug <laugh>.

Julia Kuo (10:13):
Right. But then when you, you know, later on they showed this closeup of what glowworms really look like. And I was like, oh that is a little terrifying.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:20):
I love how poetically violent that is. Right. Like, "Oh we're camouflaged to be the night sky," and then you go up there and that's it. Lights out <laugh>.

Julia Kuo (10:28):
Yes. And violent is a good word because actually glowworms are cannibalistic and they're territorial. So you know, what we saw was, like, oh, spaced out dots, like beautiful. And they're spaced out because if they get too close, they will all cannibalize each other <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:43):
I love this.

Julia Kuo (10:43):
Yeah. Nature is not all pretty and soft. But I think if I had to choose one that I really enjoyed in this process, maybe it was the jeweled squid. One thing I learned in this process is it's hard to find good reference for bioluminescent creatures. And that is because photography or even the study of bioluminescent creatures is relatively recent. You know, the pioneers are still alive and giving TED talks today, like the methods of even taking a photo of bioluminescent creatures is new. And so I was seeing these images and I'd be like, hmm...sometimes in Google images they look black or dark red and sometimes they look gray or dusty pink, what great colors, you know? And through the scientists we worked with, I learned that the dusty gray and pink ones, they're specimen, they're dead. You know, like the internet, you have to have some context in order to understand what you're seeing.

Julia Kuo (11:42):
And without context you can easily be led astray. And in fact, I think I learned that in Finding Nemo, the angler fish is modeled after a dead specimen. It's like ghoulish and grayish rather than kind of dark. And so I'll show you...one second. So in looking up jeweled squid, I found this plushy toy on Amazon.

Laura Maylene Walter (12:03):
Amazing.

Julia Kuo (12:04):
Which is like pink. So this is a dead...this is a specimen and you know, in the spread about jeweled squid, it's all about how they use their colors to camouflage...

Laura Maylene Walter (12:13):
Yeah.

Julia Kuo (12:14):
Against the light. And you know, that's like, that is such an important part of why these creatures function and look the way they do that it was a neat way to learn through mistakes about them.

Laura Maylene Walter (12:26):
Yeah, I really love that illustration of the jeweled squid in the book that also it looked like a starry sky in the illustration, which is really gorgeous. Yeah, I learned a lot by reading this. I hadn't thought a lot about the different functions of bioluminescence, but it could be camouflage, to hide, it could be a distraction maybe the kind of squid that it releases a glowing blue cloud when it's threatened. What is that? Oooh the vampire squid. How could I forget the name of that one? That's great.

Julia Kuo (12:55):
Oh yes, yes.

Laura Maylene Walter (12:57):
And also you had mentioned the dragonfish, which I did not know about, that they have a red light that only they can see that they use to catch prey. Is that right?

Julia Kuo (13:05):
Right. Like they look so fearsome but if you ever see a a specimen of one in exhibit, they're really, really tiny. But they are these like formidable creatures where yes they use it to hunt essentially and they use it to stay under the radar, both their own bodies and then their way of illuminating prey.

Laura Maylene Walter (13:22):
Was there one creature to illustrate or one part of the book that was the most challenging for you?

Julia Kuo (13:28):
You know, the jeweled squid, we did have to fuss with it a bit to make sure that it captured the content that we were looking for or you know, to explain how it does look different when it's doing counter illumination. But really, you know, I love illustration. I think it's my wheelhouse and I think just because I have this new thing called writing that I'm trying to do, I almost feel like the challenge was mostly in the writing part. Oooh. I think that the crown jellyfish part, I had to think about that one a little bit because in the static spread I want to convey movement and what happens, you know, so how do you do that without using like comic panels? Hopefully readers will get that there's the flash of light and then the creature that that belongs to. But you know, kind of like hoping that readers will come along with me on that and that it's clear because it's a relatively minimalistic book.

Laura Maylene Walter (14:22):
I think the movement is captured. I felt like I was underwater a lot of the time. In a good way <laugh>, so.

Julia Kuo (14:27):
Ohhh, I love that.

Laura Maylene Walter (14:27):
Well let's talk about the writing a bit since you said that was more of the challenge, it's your first nonfiction book and I know you did a lot of research. Can you talk about your research process and how you approached the writing of this book?

Julia Kuo (14:40):
So I think the research, there were a couple resources online that seemed more established. However, I still, I did have this sense that I was kind of of like digging in dark because I wonder if it has to do with it just still being a relatively new field. And probably most of it was about me not knowing how to research. I think after the fact I found some really great books about bioluminescence where I was like, oh this would've been really helpful while I was trying to write the book. One thing that I realized in the process is that I was lacking this type of big picture context. I could Google all I want and like read individual pieces and parts about creatures all I want, but I'm kind of like an outsider just describing things, little bits that I've learned rather than understanding the whole idea behind it.

Julia Kuo (15:34):
And so the fact checker that we hired was so much more than that. His name is Dr. Steven Haddock and he is a leading bioluminescence and like marine researcher at MBARI, which is Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, a very well-respected organization. What a person to be paired with because he himself had pioneered many of these studies. The community is only so big. And so he was able to kind of redirect me from who are these creatures, which is this very basic understanding and question that I had to why? Why are they making light? Like that's the question that researchers are asking today. And so thanks to him like this book was richer for it. It would've kind of been more of a list without it.

Laura Maylene Walter (16:20):
You know, I've never quite thought of research in that way where you can do piecemeal research and understand certain facts or certain parts of it. But you're right, sometimes you're missing that larger context and a larger understanding. It's actually making me feel a little better right now because I'm thinking of certain things I've researched for writing that they just might not be something I'm naturally inclined to be interested in. And I'm trying to research it and looking it up and just never feeling like I'm fully getting the whole picture. And you're right that sometimes you need to take another step maybe to get that picture. Sometimes it's talking to an expert if you're able or going somewhere in person maybe experiencing something. So I think that's a really important thing for writers to, to be aware of. And yeah and I'm curious about the actual nuts and bolts of the writing process, what that looks like for you. You did mention the dual stories in the book, the very simple story, the narrative one with the child and then the more factual based part, which both in parts, a lot of information I learned a lot, but also in a way that is digestible for children. And so I think the book could really cover kind of a broad range of ages of who it would be appropriate for. But how did you approach the writing process for your first nonfiction book?

Julia Kuo (17:33):
You know, there's the more straightforward part where we're explaining this world of bioluminescence that we just went over. But I think for the larger narrative, I definitely went into it with kind of the subjective, it's how we connect the subject to people. It is this sense of awe and wonder with which we see, you know, fireflies and glowworms and foxfire and that we would have if we were able to see these deep sea creatures, which we won't like in our lifetime, right? We'll only see them through like a secondary source, like a book or a film. My goal was to show people who look like me and my community doing this adventuring because that's what I was doing. It's a very, very soft way of saying like these are the people who are in this space who are interested. Maybe you look like me and you could be in the space or maybe you don't look like me, but expect to see people like us in this space. And so connecting the people to the narrative and using the like, you know, what if we could light up? That was what the editor and I came up with as far as making it a little bit more personal by continuing that strain of like wonder. We can marvel at these creatures but should we also marvel at our own bodies? They do do incredible things.

Laura Maylene Walter (18:46):
I like that. It is a book of wonder. I would say that's a perfect way of describing it. Well you have had a lot of really amazing experiences with bioluminescence. I think for me, aside from fireflies a couple years ago I was kayaking in Florida, it was a nighttime kayaking trip. We were catching, I believe they were comb jellies in nets and when you would hold them in certain ways in the light, they would just flash blue and it was so amazing. I think probably a very minor experience compared to some of the things that you have seen. But it was just, see this jellyfish just flashing blue, it just seemed so magical and amazing. So I was curious, even though you've already seen a lot, is there anything that you kind of have on a list now that you would like to go see after working on this book?

Julia Kuo (19:31):
Well first of all, that sounds amazing. You know, like I looked at a lot of comb jellies and I remember a couple times considering making them one of the, oh yeah, there is one in the extraordinary world page. But yes. Beautiful. So after the book I only had one more bioluminescent experience and that was up here in Seattle along the west coast. We'll get these like tides that where you can see bioluminescence in the water and you know, you just have to pick and choose when and the further out you can go the better. Which is why...so you said you were kayaking? Yeah, so was I. And so for this particular experience, I think it was the fall before last fall, we just went into the water on a night that people said they were seeing bioluminescent and for the some we had to kind of like submerge our heads in the water. And even then it was only white flashes. So it's so hard. So many of them are deep sea creatures.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:20):
I was going to say a lot of them you can't really see.

Julia Kuo (20:23):
Right. Unless I'm really in a submersible that probably costs a million dollars just for that one trip.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:28):
That was on my list of questions by the way, not to get too macabre, but did you follow closely the news of the Titan submersible last year when it imploded?

Julia Kuo (20:37):
Ohhh, right.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:39):
Yeah. We're just going, we're going dark now.

Julia Kuo (20:41):
Okay, okay, okay. I did watch it or I did follow it.

Laura Maylene Walter (20:44):
Yeah, yeah.

Julia Kuo (20:45):
I didn't really make that connection...

Laura Maylene Walter (20:49):
Because I was just thinking of the deep sea, that's all <laugh>.

Julia Kuo (20:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think because I had seen videos of the rovers that they use to see bioluminescent creatures and it just seems worlds apart.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:00):
Yeah, yeah.

Julia Kuo (21:01):
You know in the biographies that I've read about people going in these things like yes, it is scary. There's this like understanding that there's this point of no return, you know, you're relying on this vehicle and I think that it's easy to kind of maintain a distance because it is only the realm of like these few researchers.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:20):
But it is amazing to think how much bioluminescence is unavailable to us because it's so far down in the ocean. Which makes me think, I believe your book mentions that some bioluminescence can be seen from space. Is that right? What tends to be visible from that far away?

Julia Kuo (21:38):
I think it's the dinoflagellates. It's when there display is particularly bright and covers a large area and then you know, because they're simulated by movement, it's the waves that...sure like paddling when it's still like is how I experienced it. But like when the waves are rougher that will generate the light.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:56):
That's amazing. Yeah. Well I did want to ask a few other general, kind of artistic life questions and one of them was, so you said you worked at American Greetings in Cleveland, which I've never worked there, but I know in Cleveland that seems to be a place that a lot of artistic and writing minded people kind of cycle through there. So would you like to talk about that a little bit or the difference between illustrating greeting cards, what that was like for you versus children's books?

Julia Kuo (22:24):
Oh yeah. So you know, the two and a half years that I was at American Greetings, it was just a fun time of life surrounded by all these fellow creatives who were close enough in age and being on these teams, it was a really great view of how illustration could occur within a big company and how that kind of got, the process got distributed out in a little bit of a assembly line format. And some of the friends I made there are still my closest friends to this day. It was a great experience. There are some things the company did that really appreciated. For example, they have these gallery shows where their own artists will hang work that get displayed and then people from the public can come in. I'm not sure how much people on the outside know, oftentimes it was people like me competing to buy those pieces.

Julia Kuo (23:13):
So we just keep buying each other's pieces because we love them. And American Greetings also at that time did these creative recharges. So you could go on trips and kind of like investigate an area of art that you were interested in. I did this illustration academy in Sarasota, Florida, but I think that I always knew that I was going to go off and do more types of illustration and the only way really to access many of those is via freelance. You know, so American Greetings, there are the illustrators themselves, but I was not an illustrator. I was a...what we call the planner, which means that you see a whole line of carbs. So for each season, let's say like Mother's Day from daughter or like Mother's Day, you know to the mother, you would map out what these 20 cards would look like and the distribution of cute bears versus rabbits across them, the distribution of color, you know, there would be a color palette picked and you'd make sure there's not too many pinks versus greens versus oranges.

Julia Kuo (24:10):
And then you would sketch out what each card would look like according to the writing. I would make these sketches and then they would be passed to the illustration studio who would execute them. And so that's kind of being a little bit earlier up in the process than what I do now where, you know, I make the final art that you see. There is something about the bigger picture creating a collection that feels like picture books because a picture book is truly a collection of images. You know, it's a series that needs to work together that needs to flow. And I think that almost the commercial-ness of it all, like this needs to speak to more people than just me. Like it has a role to play clearly. It needs to be something that feels family friendly, that feels like pleasant to behold, but can have more depth than that. I think that those things are all, they're in this like interesting fuzzy area that they share.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:07):
Well along those lines I was wondering if you have advice for other artists or writers about kind of changing tact and trying new things in their career. So you've done that a lot. You, you know, moving into editorial work, in freelance and then illustrating books and then writing books and writing a nonfiction book. So do you have any advice for someone who is maybe nervous or considering taking a leap into something new? Any tips that you could offer them?

Julia Kuo (25:32):
Yeah, absolutely. I guess I want to start by saying it's hard and you know, it does depend on the resources you have. I was lucky enough to be living, only supporting myself. I didn't have student debt, my rent was $400 a month, and I quickly saved enough money at American Greetings to feel like I had a net, a generous net with which to go into freelancing. From then on I kind of saw it as some projects paid for other projects. So if I had a big project that would pay for my time to experiment on bioluminescent paintings, on the flip side there are going to be inevitably be times when you don't have as much work, especially when you're starting out as a freelancer. And those times are really unnerving. I don't think it's for everyone. I think the first time I just kind of balked and didn't know what to do.

Julia Kuo (26:21):
The second time I decided to make my own personal project, which at the time was drawing all these pictures of Cleveland, which eventually became its own thing and did get me more work. But I think that not everyone has to do it has to like buy off this riskier less stable profession. But if you have the bandwidth and the resources to do it, then I would say make sure to be creating the work that you want to create because no one can read your mind and know that you have this whole body of work about bioluminescence that is ready to be made into a book. You know, when you do find success and are hired for things, as a commercial artist you are given the copy or given the subject matter and you're art directed. And so there is a certain sort of freedom that comes with the work that you make for yourself and that you put out there for other people to see. It's when you make the work that you would most like to be hired for. These days I don't really have time for that. I miss those days. And so I would say, you know, use them while when you have them. It may not feel like a blessing at the time, but it can be.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:27):
That's really good advice I think. And it really, yeah, it comes down to creating what you most feel driven to create. So use that time while you have it. I think that's really great. Well, speaking of creating, I saw on your website that you went to Banff, to the residency there and I'm always curious to hear about writers and artists experience at places like this. So could you tell our listeners what Banff is and what your experience was like there?

Julia Kuo (27:53):
Oh yes. So I love this place. So Banff itself is a national park in kind of central Canada. Like the closest town that you would fly into is Calgary. It's just this really gorgeous national park. It's known for a couple features like Lake Louise and the Banff Arts Centre or Centre for the Arts is an artist residency for a lot of different disciplines. So I was there twice, you know, when I was there once the Australian Chamber Orchestra was there another time it was a group of musicians and dancers and writers. It's a really fantastic spot for writers. Like the writers get these little cabins in the woods that are so charming. I did a lot of exploring of what being an illustrator meant and I think this one was a little, maybe a little less traditional because Banff is maybe geared towards fine artists a little bit more than illustrators.

Julia Kuo (28:49):
So the cohort of visual artists I was with were always all fine artists. They exhibit in galleries. But I felt like, you know, I should have time to recharge and like make art that I wanted. And in that way I was behaving more like a fine artist than an illustrator. And so there's different types of residencies there. There are the open ones where you just go based on your discipline. So you know, the visual artists, we all made our own work and we kind of showed it at the end of like a month when the musicians came they...because their way of showing work is by actually performing. So like often we would just go and listen.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:25):
Oh, I love that. That's a gift.

Julia Kuo (29:27):
Yes, amazing. And for example the Australian Chamber Orchestra, you know they had like their performance in the big hall the next day they had a performance in a café where we usually eat lunch.

Laura Maylene Walter (29:37):
Yeah.

Julia Kuo (29:37):
And then that night they went down to the bar and they did their own rendition of grunge with like their own takes on Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails. It was so cool. The multidisciplinary part of it was really amazing. On top of that you're surrounded by like these four mountains. I always went in the winter because I thought it was especially pretty, it's just a magical experience.

Laura Maylene Walter (30:00):
Oh that's great. Yeah, I've never been to the Banff Centre for the Arts but I've been to a few residencies and it is just such a magical time where you get to just focus on your art and meet other people who are making art. And I've been to residencies that are just writers, which is great. But I always loved being in residence with visual artists, with musicians, because you get to experience different forms of art and see how other people work and I find that really, really inspiring. So I will link to this in the show notes as well, listeners. And so you can consider applying to Banff for a residency. What would you like to tell us about what you're working on next? You mentioned you have another book in the works. What can you tell us?

Julia Kuo (30:41):
Yeah, so I think there's a couple things coming out the pipeline. There's two books being published around the time of this podcast. One may have just come out, it is called THE NEXT SCIENTIST and it's by prolific writer Kate Messner. So Kate first wrote a book called THE NEXT PRESIDENT. I love the angle with which she approached this. It's like every president was once a child who was interested in something...who is next president going to be? Maybe you, child reader. And so THE NEXT SCIENTIST kind of follows that format with all of these different scientists who once were really curious, active, imaginative children who had a interest in something that they followed through as an adult. She does a really great job spanning time. Like it's not all Kepler and like the 1600s. We have modern scientists, we have many different disciplines and it is all about where does the sense of wonder and creativity and curiosity take you.

Julia Kuo (31:41):
Well for some kids they become adults who are still curious. So that's that. And then in October I will be having a book that I also illustrated come out and it's called WHEN LOVE IS MORE THAN WORDS. It is the debut picture book of writer Jocelyn Chung. And it's very different from THE NEXT SCIENTIST. It's all about the ways that a family, a Taiwanese American coded family shows love, that are not necessarily a verbal "I love you". We all identify with this in some way. You know, we all show love outside of those three words. But this one is just specific to her family and also my family. And I love the specificity. I love the idea of this general concept that many people can understand and just seeing it through one particular lens, you know, like the beauty of the children's bookshelf.

Laura Maylene Walter (32:35):
That is fantastic. I will link to both of those for our final question. And this conversation has been such a delight. So thank you so much for joining us on Page Count. But I would like to return to LUMINOUS with the concept of making your own light. What if we could make our own light? So I wondered if you could tell us for you right now in your creative life, what is a way that you're making your own light or what gives you the sense of light in your creative life right now today?

Julia Kuo (33:04):
I appreciate that question because I do feel sometimes like, oh you know, I've been doing this for a while. Like I've been making books and while there are new little challenges along the way overall it's not too different, you know, than what I've been doing for the past really 10 years now. And I think that what I have thought out has changed or like the types of books that I want to make have changed. So there's the agency I have when a book comes to me and I can take it or reject it based on how much I like the manuscript. And then there's like the added dimension of when I write my own books and that really gets me to question like what do I care about? Because, because I'm a freelancer, sometimes I just feel like, well who knows, this could be my last book. So if this is my last book, what would I write about?

Laura Maylene Walter (33:52):
What writers and artists think all the time. Yep <laugh>.

Julia Kuo (33:55):
Yeah, this like scarcity.

Julia Kuo (33:57):
And, and so you know, I think that the two books that I wrote, LET'S DO EVERYTHING AND NOTHING and LUMINOUS, they All come from a place of the identity I have as a Taiwanese American woman who adventures. And then the next book that I have coming out is called HOME IS A WISH and that's a little bit more about displacement. It's going to be a quiet book about moving and what home feels like. I think that I was aware with LET'S DO EVERYTHING AND NOTHING and LUMINOUS, that there was this like niche of not only am I like, I have this specific voice as someone who adventures in the outdoors and looks like me. And the HOME IS A WISH one is a lot more general. Everyone moves. I have generational stories behind moving my appearance being immigrants, but on the surface it will appear much more general.

Julia Kuo (34:44):
And so what's next? What stories do I hold that I feel are important enough to put in front of people? And you know, I think it's almost such an existential thing that it's a big deal when I do come up with something <laugh>. So yeah, so one of the books I'm working on right now, it's about Bing cherries. So especially here in the Pacific Northwest we get a lot like, cherry season is amazing and I didn't know until I read this like one line in this nonfiction history book that Bing cherries were named after this Chinese immigrant named Ah Bing who cultivated it or who helped to cultivate it. And so the stories that we are going to make out of this are about the idea that, you know, we have our American legends, we have our folklore...essentially Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, there's not too many.

Julia Kuo (35:34):
What if there are more? And what if they looked like different types of people?

Laura Maylene Walter (35:37):
Yeah.

Julia Kuo (35:37):
And I think that was so exciting to me because it felt so purposeful. You know, like why can't we expand this lexicon and what other stories are hidden out there? So it was a two book deal. So we have Bing, and then the writer and I are currently trying to come up with the second book and I think I just found an idea. And you know, when you find the right idea, it's just such this like glowing magical.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:03):
Yes, it's bioluminescent <laugh>. Yeah.

Julia Kuo (36:06):
Right. You know that it's right. You know that like it fulfills everything. And so it's like such a holistic sense of this is what I want to put in the world.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:15):
I'm refraining from asking what it is. Because I know if it's a brand new idea, you probably can't talk about it yet. But I love that and I'm glad that you will work on putting it into the world.

Julia Kuo (36:26):
Oh, thank you.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:26):
Most of all, thank you for being here. And thank you for LUMINOUS. I am going to be thinking about glowworms and jeweled squid for a while. It was just such a delight and thank you so much and we will be looking forward to everything else you write and illustrate.

Julia Kuo (36:43):
Oh, it was such a pleasure. Thank you. I'm so glad I got to do this.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:52):
Page Count is presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review for Page Count wherever you get your podcast. Learn more online or find a transcript of this episode at ohiocenterforthebook.org. Follow us on Instagram @ohiocenterforthebook or find us on Facebook. If you'd like to get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org and put "podcast" in the subject line. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks for another chapter of Page Count.