Peng Shepherd
Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where she rode horses and trained in classical ballet, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and Las Vegas. Her first novel, The Book of M, won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today Show and NPR On Point. A graduate of the NYU MFA program, Peng is the recipient of a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Elizabeth George Foundation’s emerging writers 2016 grant. Her next novel, The Cartographers, comes out in 2021.
We had a great chat with Peng about her route to publication, and hear about her amazingly quick path to picking up an agent and a publisher. We also hear about her writing process (no planning!) and find out that she may be the only person in the world who doesn't know the ending to Game of Thrones...