First Draft Episode #208: Mary H. K. Choi

Mary H. K. Choi, New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, and host of podcasts Hey, Cool Job and Hey, Cool Life!. Her newest YA contemporary book, Permanent Record, is out now! We talk about addiction and fiction, loving and writing boys who fight against toxic masculinity, and fighting against “I’ll be perfect when…” thoughts.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Stephen King, John Grisham, and airport novels were some of the first things Mary picked up when she moved to Texas and became a reader

• Mary compares moving, learning to read, and realizing she could *remember* what she read as Bradley Cooper discovering the mind-expanding possibilities in Limitless (movie)

• Mass Appeal was the graffiti magazine Mary went to work for, and they now do documentaries, including the recent Wu-Tang doc, Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men (tv series)

• “Like. Flirt. Ghost: A Journey Into the Social Media Lives of Teens,” an article Mary wrote for WIRED, is fantastic and everyone should read it

• Hold the door open for other writers. Be like Hodor

• “hk-choi-wanted-to-write-a-book-in-which-high-key-nothing-happens.html">Mary H. K. Choi Wanted to Write a Book Where ‘High-Key Nothing Happens,” by Joanna Mikas and Tracy Ma for The New York Times

• Bo Burnam, comedian and writer and director of Eighth Grade (movie)

• Shanna the She-Devil (comic book) and Lady Deadpool (comic book)

• Mary wrote D. J. Khaled’s The Keys (book)

• Edward Orloff with McCormick is Mary’s current agent

• Zareen Jaffery is Mary’s editor at Simon & Schuster. Zareen has also worked with Jenny Han on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Summer I Turned Pretty series (listen to her episode of First Draft here), and with Siobhan Vivian on The Last Boy and Girl in the World and Stay Sweet (hear Siobhan on a live panel episode of First Draft here). However, Morgan Matson’s editor is actually Justin Chanda, also at Simon & Schuster (listen to Morgan’s First Draft episodes here and here)!

• “I love my mom a not-normal amount and it makes me crazy,” an article Mary wrote for Aeon about her mom which went viral

• The Joaquin Phoenix movie, Her, is akin to how Mary felt exploring the idea of falling in love over text

• Mary references Justin Bieber’s first appearance on The Ellen Show. Watch it and be transported to a time when he was a mere bb

• There are some similarities between Permanent Record and the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts film Notting Hill, which is a classic

• Mary and I are now both obsessed with Brené Brown, author of Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection

• The New York slang that Mary uses in the book is a love letter to and-mero-beginners-guide.html"> Desus & Mero (who went from YouTube channel to their podcast, Bodega Boys, to a VICE and now a Showtime TV show) and Mary’s friends who run the podcast Chillin Island

• Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs is awesome but it does not include mental health

• Mary is a part of Overeaters Anonymous

• Holly Black talked to me in her episode (listen here) about the depressive state she fell into after publishing her first book

I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998. You can also email the podcast at firstdraftwithsarahenni@gmail.com. 

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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