San Mateo County Libraries welcomes Lio Min on Tuesday, June 27 at 6:30 PM. Lio will discuss their debut novel, Beating Heart Baby, before engaging with your questions! Free copies of the book will be available at all branches on a first come first serve basis. Supply is limited.
Make sure to register in order to receive your Zoom invitation.
A Love Letter to Internet Friendships, Anime and Indie Rock
Follow the story of Santi and Suwa. Santi leaves behind everything and everyone he knows as he moves to a new high school. Haunted by a messy fallout with his online best friend, Santi is hopeful in starting fresh. He joins the marching band and everyone welcomes him with open arms...well, almost everyone. Enter Suwa: musical prodigy and instant rival. Suwa doesn’t believe Santi has the talent to even be in the presence of himself and their marching band. And so begins Santi and Suwa’s journey from enemies to friends to maybe more than friends.
Get to know Lio Min
Lio Min has devoted their life to writing about music, magic and sadness at the locus of queer youth culture and metamorphic Asia America. Their culture reporting and fiction have appeared in The FADER, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and Them., among others. Their debut YA novel Beating Heart Baby, which the Los Angeles Times called "alive with ache, grief, hunger, love, pain and awe," follows two boys as they fall in and out of internet friendships, first love, family, fandom, and reckon with the relationship between identity and art.
Praise for Beating Heart Baby
“Lio Min’s Beating Heart Baby is a “dizzying, sexy, and utterly heartfelt” love letter to internet friendships, anime, and indie rock” – Mary H.K. Choi, author of Yolk
"This book is alive with ache, grief, hunger, love, pain and awe. . . . It should be read for the reasons all good books should be read: because it’s beautiful and moving, nuanced and humane. Most of all, because it’s fun." —Los Angeles Times
"A beautiful story about finding family, messy first loves, and the power of music. Beating Heart Baby will break your heart in the best way." —Emiko Jean, author of Tokyo Ever After
"Beating Heart Baby creates the eclectic, stylish world of every teen weirdo’s dreams. Readers will connect to the struggle and yearning of young queer love while finding warmth and acceptance within its diverse and compassionate cast." —Jen Wang, author of The Prince and the Dressmaker
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