Kelly Yang: Progress Before Perfection
In this interview, author Kelly Yang discusses the process of writing her first novel for adults, The Take.
Kelly Yang is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Front Desk series, New From Here, Finally Seen, Finally Heard, young adult novels Parachutes and Private Label and picture books Yes We Will and Little Bird Laila. Her books have earned multiple awards, including the 2019 APALA Award for Children’s Literature, the Strega Prize for Literature, have been named one of the Best Books of the 21st Century by Kirkus, and have featured on multiple best of the year lists. In addition to being a novelist, she has written screenplays and television pilots for Netflix, CBS Studios, and the CW. Kelly immigrated to the United States when she was six years old and grew up in Southern California. She went to college at the age of 13 and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School, an experience that provides her a unique perspective on aging. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
In this interview, Kelly discusses the process of writing her first novel for adults, The Take, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Kelly Yang
Literary agent: Faye Bender
Book title: The Take
Publisher: Berkley/ Penguin Random House
Release date: April 14, 2026
Genre/category: Literary fiction; book club fiction; psychological thriller
Previous titles: Front Desk series, New From Here, Finally Seen, and many other children’s and YA novels
Elevator pitch: Would you sell your youth for $3 million? Maggie Wang, a broke young Asian American writer, needs a lifeline. Ingrid Parker, a veteran white Hollywood producer with her career on the edge, offers an irresistible deal: $3 million for 10 experimental medical sessions to reverse her aging, using Maggie as a transfusion partner, and mentorship.
What prompted you to write this book?
I wanted to explore the complex feelings of aging in a society obsessed with youth, and the desperation of being a young person, just trying to get a little credit for their ideas and access to an industry that’s obsessed with experience.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I had the initial idea in the summer of 2023, after reading an article in the New York Times on how scientists have figured out that the blood of young mice can extend the life in old mice through a complicated infusion process, where the older mice de-age, while the younger mice got rapidly older. I immediately thought, What if people started doing this? To my surprise in my research, I found out that some tech bros in Silicon Valley were, in fact, starting to experiment with anti-aging blood transfusions, and other biohacking tricks. I thought it would be fascinating to write a story about this from the perspectives of two women who decided to try this and how their lives unravel as they both take more and more from each other.
I really wanted to write about story, because so much of story is understanding another person’s life, and what is appropriate to take, and not to take. There’s so much power involved in that. Who gets to tell the story? The line between borrowing and stealing is very hazy, especially in Hollywood, when I have worked briefly as a screenwriter and it was probably the most harrowing experience of my life! But I’m glad I lived to tell the story!
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The biggest surprise for me is how much people related to Ingrid and felt for her, and how much I related to Ingrid too and also felt for her. There were so many moments in the story, where I desperately hated her, but was also completely in awe of her and sympathetic to her circumstances. To this day, she’s someone I think of often, especially when I’m being too hard on my own kids. I ask myself, am I being too Ingrid right now?
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
The biggest surprise is I realized how much I love writing books for adults, too! I feel like my heart will always be in middle grade, but the process of writing for adults was incredibly, incredibly fun!
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
My biggest hope is for readers, especially readers of color, to stop hoping that someone’s going to come along and open the door for us, whether it’s another woman or a person of color. They may. They may not. And that is a very painful, hard truth to realize, speaking from experience. But the sooner we realize this, the better off we are. I’m not saying it can’t happen. But we can’t wait for it. No one is going to save us or give us permission. So, we have to just take it. We have to give ourselves permission.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Progress before perfection! Show up, do the work, don’t wait for the perfection conditions to write because they don’t exist! You’ll be waiting forever. None of us know the secret to producing gripping, incredible writing, but if you show up and you put in the work, you have a much higher chance of getting there!
