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  Traci Chee
News

Cover Reveal: The House Where Death Lives

12/12/2023

 
teal-washed background of gnarled trees with the cover for THE HOUSE WHERE DEATH LIVES (beige background, a haunted house torn apart by a tree growing through the inside) edited by Alex Brown in front
ICYMI: I'm part of another anthology! 🏠 A few weeks ago, Page Street YA revealed the cover of THE HOUSE WHERE DEATH LIVES, edited by Alex Brown, and look how gorgeous it is! I love writing short stories, and I think this is one of the best (and most tragic 💔) I've ever written, so I can't wait for you to read it!

Here's the official description:

🏠THE HOUSE WHERE DEATH LIVES ANTHOLOGY (originally titled: This House is Haunted) edited by Alex Brown:

✨New York Times bestselling and award-winning authors weave interconnected haunted house stories to build a unique collection of chilling tales, with stories from Alex Brown, Nova Ren Suma, Gina Chen, Traci Chee, Linsey Miller, Rosiee Thor, Courtney Gould, Kay Costales, Liz Hull, Shelly Page, Justine Pucella Winans, Sandra Proudman, C.L. McCollum, Nora Elghazzawi, Tori Bovalino, G. Haron Davis✨

🏠A dance to the death. A girl who’s just as monstrous as H.H. Holmes. A hallway that’s constantly changing—and hungry. All of these stories exist in the same place—within the frame of a particular house that isn’t bound by the laws of time and space.

🏠Following in the footsteps of dark/horror-filled YA anthologies like His Hideous Heart and Slasher Girls and Monster Boys, and Netflix’s ground-breaking adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, this YA speculative fiction anthology explores how the permanence of a home can become a space of transition and change for both the inhabitants and the creatures who haunt them.

🏠Each story in the anthology will focus on a different room in the house and feature unique takes on monsters from a wide array of cultural traditions. Whether it’s a demonic Trickster, a water-loving Rusalka, or a horrifying, baby-imitating Tiyanak, there’s bound to be something sinister lurking in the shadows.

THE HOUSE WHERE DEATH LIVES releases August 6, 2024, but pre-orders are available now via Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, or check with your favorite local retailer to see about pre-ordering!

Cover credits: Laura Benton & Rachel Jablonski

A Heartbreak Guide for Potential Gifters

11/28/2023

 
teal-to-pink gradient background with the text
Want to gift one of my books to a friend or loved one? Here's a quick guide to how much you'll make them cry.
  • The Reader 💔
  • The Speaker 💔💔
  • The Storyteller 💔💔💔
  • We Are Not Free 💔💔💔
  • A Thousand Steps into Night ❤️
  • Kindling 💔💔💔
OK, so Kindling isn't technically out until next year--though preorders ARE available now--but untli then you've got four lovely offerings, from minor heartaches to major tearjerkers. And in case you want to spare your giftees some heartbreak this holiday season, there's always A Thousand Steps into Night! 😈

Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

11/14/2023

 
charcoal to red gradient background overlaid with bolts of red fire; at the top, text reading
A bit of good news to start the morning: KINDLING is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection! 🔥 Thanks so much to Junior Library Guild for this amazing recognition. Can't wait to share this story with you all. 🔥 

Kindling Cover Reveal

6/22/2023

 
Book cover for KINDLING on a charcoal-gray and ember-red gradient background lanced through with fire; cover text reads
🔥 COVER REVEAL 🔥

Illustration by Kiuyan Ran
Design by Kathy Lam

⚔️⚔️⚔️

Come victory or come death

Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives.

Now, the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs.

Violence still plagues the countryside, and memories haunt those who remain. When a village comes under threat of siege, it offers an opportunity for seven kindlings to fight one last time. But war changed these warriors. And to reclaim who they once were, they will have to battle their pasts, their trauma, and their grim fates to come together again—or none of them will make it out alive.

From bestselling and award-winning author Traci Chee comes a gut-wrenching, introspective fantasy about seven lost soldiers searching for the peace they once fought for and the future in which they’re finally daring to believe.

March 5, 2024

⚔️⚔️⚔️
​
So excited for this one. ⚔️ Pre-orders available now. (And as always, save your receipts. 🎁)

Bank Street College of Education's Best Children's Books of the Year 2023

5/10/2023

 
multicolored checkerboard background with black on white text: The Children's Book Committee of Bank Street College of Education: The Best Children's Books of the Year 2023 Edition: Books Published in 2022
A Thousand Steps into Night was selected as one of the Best Children's Books of the Year 2023 by the Bank Street College of Education! 🌙👹 So thrilled to see this book listed among so many other wonderful titles. Check out the full list here!

YOU ARE HERE Launches Today!

3/7/2023

 
Traci Chee in front of white bookshelves with many books on them, smiling and holding up a copy of YOU ARE HERE: CONNECTING FLIGHTS
YOU ARE HERE: CONNECTING FLIGHTS arrives on bookshelves today! ✈️ Huge congratulations to our fearless editor Ellen Oh, who brought us all together with such style, and to Linda Sue Park on the launch of Allida's first title! I’m so honored to have been part of this beautiful, multi-faceted project and can’t wait for it to find its readers out there in the world! ✈️

You Are Here is a powerful and engaging exploration of contemporary East and Southeast Asian American identity told through twelve interwoven stories set in a teeming Chicago airport.

Written by Linda Sue Park, Erin Entrada Kelly, Grace Lin, Traci Chee, Mike Chen, Meredith Ireland, Mike Jung, Minh Lê, Ellen Oh, Randy Ribay, Christina Soontornvat, and Susan Tan, and edited by Ellen Oh. Get your copy here!

You Are Here Cover Reveal

12/1/2022

 
cover for YOU ARE HERE: CONNECTING FLIGHTS edited by Ellen Oh
ICYMI: Yesterday We Need Diverse Books revealed the cover for YOU ARE HERE: CONNECTING FLIGHTS, edited by Ellen Oh!
✈️ I’m so proud to be part of this first title from Allida—out next spring on March 7—with contributions from Mike Chen, Meredith Ireland, Mike Jung, Erin Entrada, Minh Le, Grace Lin, Ellen Oh, LindaSue Park, Randy Ribay, Christina Soontornvat, and Susan Tan!
✈️ I love seeing the way artist Marcos Chin put all our characters on display as they make their way through this Chicago airport. (Check out my character in her Kiki’s Delivery Sevice bow!)
✈️ Head to We Need Diverse Books to read more about the project from Ellen Oh!

I'm writing another fantasy!

11/11/2022

 
An image of fire on a black background with a deal announcement that reads: Emilia Rhodes at Clarion Books has bought Kindling by NBA finalist Traci Chee, a YA reimagining of Seven Samurai. Set against a war-ravaged fantasy world where kindling warfare--the use of elite, magic-wielding teenage soldiers--has been outlawed seven kindlings search for purpose and identity as they prepare for one final battle. Publication is slated for winter 2024; Barbara Poelle at Irene Goodman Literary Agency negotiated the two-book deal for world rights.
I was first introduced to the film Seven Samurai (1954) and its American counterpart Magnificent Seven (1960) while working at my hometown movie theater between my first and second years of college, and as soon as I started watching, I was enraptured by these stories--

their slowness & their action,
their bleakness & their beauty,
their swagger & their sadness.

I knew already that I wanted to be a writer, and watching these films helped shape the kind of writer I wanted to be. A writer who was interested in stories that were always more than one thing at once--

literary & entertaining,
artful & adventurous,
epic & small.

I’m so thrilled to be working with Emilia Rhodes, Clarion, and the whole team at HarperCollins to bring this story blazing across your shelves, and I cannot wait for you to meet these kindlings, these wandering warriors, these lost children searching for home. ⚔️

Look at that shiny new sticker...

11/3/2022

 
cover of A Thousand Steps into Night with a white medal that reads
Ka-pow! ​💥

Some thoughts as the news sinks in...

9/15/2022

 
Traci Chee in a burgundy blouse holding a copy of her book A Thousand Steps into Night
It's finally starting to sink in. A THOUSAND STEPS INTO NIGHT is on the longlist for the 2022 National Book Award.
 
Yesterday, when I read the news, I thought at first that it must be a mistake. My book? My silly Ghibli-esque adventure? My tongue-in-cheek romp? My episodic road trip through a magical world teeming with demons and spirits? My haunting Japanese-inspired folktale? My critique of American patriarchy in the guise of an escapist fantasy? My unapologetic declaration of joy?
 
Was important? Literary? Worthy of recognition?
 
Wow.
 
YES.
 
That’s what this incredible recognition says to me. Yes, there is value in adventure, in laughter, in critique and fantasy and joy. Yes, these things are necessary, noteworthy, and engaged in a national conversation about gender and sexism and power, hierarchy and marginalization and the making of a better, more inclusive world.
 
They’re also (I hope) fun. And there’s value in that too.
 
As I come to grips with the news, I find that I’m excited. I’m tickled. And I’m so, so grateful.
 
My bird boy is on the National Book Award longlist.
My trash monkeys are on the National Book Award longlist.
My demon girl in all her awkwardness is on the National Book Award longlist.
 
Congratulations, little heroes. Today, you are seen.
 
Thank you to my editors, Catherine Onder and Emilia Rhodes, and to the entire team at Clarion and HarperCollins. Thank you to the National Book Foundation and the judges for recognizing this story among so many notable and important titles. And my deepest congratulations again to all the longlisters! It is truly such an honor to be here with you.
 
Kelly Barnhill, The Ogress and the Orphans
 
Isaac Blum, The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen
 
Johnnie Christmas, Swim Team
 
Anna-Marie McLemore, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix
 
Sonora Reyes, The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School
 
Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, and Dawud Anyabwile, Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist For Justice
 
Sabaa Tahir, All My Rage
 
Sherri Winston, Lotus Bloom and the Afro Revolution
 
Lisa Yee, Maizy Chen’s Last Chance
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  • Home
  • Bio
  • Books
    • Anthologies >
      • The House Where Death Lives
      • You Are Here
    • The Reader Trilogy >
      • The Reader
      • The Speaker
      • The Storyteller
    • We Are Not Free
    • A Thousand Steps Into Night
    • Kindling
  • News
  • Events
  • etc
    • F.A.Q.
    • A Thousand Steps Extras
    • We Are Not Free Extras
    • The Reader Trilogy extras
    • Other Projects
  • Contact