Alice Evelyn Yang: Scavenge for Inspiration Like a Magpie
In this interview, author Alice Evelyn Yang discusses how a curiosity about her own family history helped inspire her to write her debut novel, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing.
Alice Evelyn Yang is a Chinese American writer from Norfolk, Virginia. Her work has been published in MQR, AAWW's The Margins, and The Rumpus, among others. She is the recipient of the 2022–23 Jesmyn Ward Prize from MQR and completed her MFA in Fiction in 2022 at Columbia University, where she was awarded the Felipe De Alba Fellowship and nominated for the Henfield Prize. Follow her on Instagram @aliceevelynyang or her bookstagram account @rot.and.read.
In this interview, Alice discusses how a curiosity about her own family history helped inspire her to write her debut novel, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Alice Evelyn Yang
Literary agent: Iwalani Kim, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates
Book title: A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing
Publisher: William Morrow (N.A.) and DeadInk Books (U.K.)
Release date: January 27, 2026 (N.A.) and February 19, 2026 (U.K.)
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Elevator pitch: A dark, magical realist family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate upon three generations of one Northern Chinese family.
What prompted you to write this book?
In college, I happened to read two family sagas close together: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and Pachinko. It led me to wonder what my own family history looked like. What did my father experience as a child growing up in Mao’s Cultural Revolution? What kind of lives did my grandparents lead? I did not have the answers. My immigrant parents were tightlipped about their past; it often felt like their past was a skin they had shed like a snake, discarded back in China. So, I began imagining a familial history, one in which I posed a central question: How does one grapple with intergenerational trauma—with these inherited trauma responses—when one does not even know what that trauma looks like? And from there, I began to build the book out, writing the three generations chronologically, each subsequent generation like a larger Russian nesting doll that had housed the accumulated debris of the past.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I spent two years writing the earliest draft of the novel, from 2021 to 2023, one of which was spent in my second and final year of the Columbia University MFA. Afterwards, I was lucky to meet my agent, Iwalani Kim, who helped me polish the draft for submission for the remainder of 2023, and we went on submission in early 2024. We very quickly received interest from my editor at William Morrow, Tessa James, and since 2024, the book has gone through many rounds of edits before being sent to the printer.
Like many artists, I found inspiration in the media I consumed: the books I read, the movies I watched, the galleries I browsed. If I came across a piece of art that resonated with my book, I liked to take it apart and understand how it approached the same themes I did. This multiplicity of inspiration often brought more depth to my own writing and subject matter. Sometimes, this helped me understand my characters better, and how I wanted their arcs to be presented. Sometimes, this inspired my craft, showing me ways in which I could experiment with form to echo content. In some ways, I see my book as an homage to the media I consumed during this long drafting and editing process.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
By the time the book arrives on shelves, it will have been two years since I completed the first draft and many months since I last edited it. Sometimes, the novel feels like a relic from my past: something I resurrect and dredge from a different period of my life. But for readers who are seeing it in bookstores, it is shiny and new, and there is an odd dissonance in this, like I am inhabiting two timelines: one in which I was enmeshed in the writing and publishing process of the book, and one in which I have grown and stepped away from the book as a different writer.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
This is my debut novel, and everything has felt surprising to me about the process. The fact that readers have resonated with it. The fact that it exists at all: the culmination of childhood dreams and encouragement from friends and professors. Much of the writing was a stumbling process, in which I felt like I was learning how to walk again, finding my sea legs on a constantly changing surface. Even now, as I am writing my second book, I find myself surprised that I have done this before.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
The rhythm of a sentence that has been labored over and loved. How storytelling and mythmaking is the connective tissue between generations and cultures. Empathy. Grief. The hope of breaking generational cycles.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Scavenge for inspiration like a magpie. Scavenge widely. Consume art gluttonously.
I often find myself grappling with the realization that there are no original themes, and that, after a millennium of human storytelling, likely no original stories. Stripped down to their bones, much of art circles around the same themes, questions, and relationships. Seeing and understanding different approaches and perspectives makes my art richer: polyvocal and layered.
