Fun Facts:
Favorite food: Any soup
Favorite snack: Seaweed
Favorite sport: Tennis
Favorite jobs in high school:
German tutor, newspaper Features
writer, & Yearbook Editor-in-Chief
Favorite subjects in college:
Entrepreneurship, Neuropsychology,
Statistics, & Japanese Art History
Least favorite subject in college:
Financial Accounting
Favorite books that have taught me
masterful storytelling and writing:
Flowers for Algernon, The Green
Mile, The Man Who Mistook His
Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical
Tales, The Notebook, Hatchet, The
Firm, Where the Red Fern Grows,
Catch Me if You Can: The True Story
of a Real Fake, The Silence of the
Lambs, The Indian in the Cupboard,
Gone Girl, Daughter of the Moon
Goddess, Walk Two Moons, & This is
NOT a Good Idea!
Currently reading: Lessons in Chemistry
I secretly love: Sardines
THE SHORT & SERIOUS VERSION
MeiLin Chan is a children's book author who crafts stories that range from humorous and silly to poetic and inspirational.
THE LONGER & STILL SERIOUS VERSION
MeiLin learned English when she moved to California from Hong Kong in 7th grade by reading middle grade novels with a dictionary. She couldn't stop reading since.
Reading led to writing. Writing changed her life when her essays led to scholarships to attend the University of California at Berkeley where she studied Business and Psychology.
With no idea what to do next, she tried out different careers. She installed text-messaging software for Caribbean wireless carriers, battled with statistics software and Excel in educational technologies research at MIT, hunted retail and office spaces for companies to expand in Boston, created and marketed novelty soaps from her soap-making studio, and translated technical information into marketing collateral for software companies.
The one thing that had stayed constant is her love for reading along with the drive to be creative. She is thankful for the caterpillar her daughter couldn’t keep that sparked the idea for the very first kidlit manuscript. When she is not brainstorming for surprising metaphors or ways to torture her characters, she’s likely making scary faces at almond-stealing squirrels by her almond trees or playing pretend with her daughters and husband in Northern California.
MeiLin is represented by Marisa Cleveland at The Seymour Agency.
THE CREATIVE VERSION
/May-lin/ * (noun)
Origin: Cantonese Chinese
1. A writer of board books, picture books, and novels for children with characters who share her life experiences and emotional truths and those with adventures she wishes she can have and difficult situations she is grateful to avoid in real life.
2. A reader who reads past her bedtime and easily swoons over beautiful language, unexpected endings, and clever plot twists.
3. An urban gardener who regularly runs a fertility clinic for plants to assure harvests and works toward self-sufficiency.
4. A friend to animals and insects except overweight squirrels that steal *all* of the almonds on her trees.
5. A mold and soap maker who creates molds to make soaps that look like food or objects you never thought could be soaps.
6. A wife to a husband with opposite tastes in music and food and a mommy to two spunky little girls who serve as personal story consultants.
7. A name given by her grandfather that means beautiful lotus.