Q&A With Sarah Wang 

Sarah Wang is the author of her debut novel New Skin & I have the privilege and honor of doing this Q&A with Sarah! New Skin (Little Brown, 2026) was named a best book by Apple Books, a favorite by NPR, and was featured in Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, People, the L.A. Times, and Bloomberg. Wang has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the London Review of Books. She is the winner of a Barbara Deming Award and teaches creative writing at Barnard College.

Q: Sarah, welcome to Book Notions! Would you please give a brief description of your debut novel New Skin? Where did the idea for New Skin come from? 

A: New Skin is about an immigrant mother and daughter living in diasporic Los Angeles. It is a story about the lives of undocumented and formerly undocumented immigrants and their children, the future of America. It is also a story about the agency of marginalized people and the stories we tell about our lives. Many immigrant stories are relegated to meritocracy and aspire toward whiteness, whereas the characters in New Skin dare to dream beyond belonging to the majority and behaving well according to dangerous standards belonging to structures that enforce power. The idea came from my lived experiences and communities where I was raised in the immigrant diasporas of Southern California. It is also about the strong and difficult bonds between the second and first generation of Chinese immigrant women, the latter of whom is Fanny, a mother addicted to plastic surgery to the point of defacement and disfiguration, and the former of whom is Linli, a daughter who desperately wants to find purpose in life as well as a love that has always eluded her. Fanny goes on a reality show for botched victims of plastic surgery to compete with others like her while Linli works at a federally funded community center.

Q: How long did it take you to write New Skin?  What are some lessons and emotions you want readers to take away from the novel once they finish?

A: It took my whole life to write New Skin. This question is often confounding, as a value system of time and worth. When we eat a plate of food from a restaurant, does it matter how much time it takes to prepare it? Why or why not? When we look at a painting in a gallery, does it matter how long it took to paint? What about the years it took to conceive of the painting’s color scheme and imagery? Can such a thing be quantifiable? What if one color in the painting is taken from a childhood afternoon sitting on the dock with your mother, does that mean it took the time from your childhood to the time when the last brush stroke was applied is the total time it took for you to make the painting? What counts as “making” time versus not “making” time? Do dreams and thought count? If so, how can that be quantifiable? And why does it matter?

What I want readers to take away from the novel is anything they want, but if they can think about the subaltern, the reality of the unconscious, and the legitimacy of gibberish, poetry, and ESL as forms of language, then that would be a bonus.

Q: Are you currently writing your second novel and if you are, can you reveal any details or is it too early?

A: I am writing a novel about a bottom-feeding curator who aligns herself with a problematic male artist.

Q: Sarah, what is it like having your work featured in famous publications which are The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Harper’s Bazaar, BOMB, and n+1? For anyone wanting to submit their work, what is the submission process like? 

A: You write a pitch and address it to an editor. The editor then accepts or rejects your pitch. You work on the piece with the editor if it is accepted. There is a copyeditor and proofreader who work on subsequent drafts. 

Q: If/When New Skin, gets a movie or series adaptation, who would your dream cast be to play the characters you created? 

A: Anyone who can bring hilarity, dignity, and beauty to the story. I don’t really know Hollywood, but Steven Yeun would be great. 

Q: Sarah, would you please provide links to your social media accounts so that way readers of the blog and I may follow you and your work?

A: IG: @daikonoclast

Twitter: https://x.com/sarah_wwang

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.wang.411