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Interviewer: Chelsea Kowalski

Interviewee: Ann Y.K. Choi

Date of Interview: May 28, 2026

[music intro]

[00:10] Chelsea: Hi, Ann, it’s great to have you here today. My name is Chelsea, which you already know, but for anyone that doesn’t, I’m a member of Writers in Trees, and also an editor and a writer on the side. I’m so glad to interview you today so we can talk about your experience writing, as well as your new book, All Things Under the Moon.

[00:34] Chelsea: I want to start us off with a very easy question, but one that everybody always wants to know when it comes to authors and writers: what inspired you to start writing?

[00:46] Ann: I started writing to manage my mental health. I started writing — it was actually my high school guidance counsellor who ended up helping me navigate through some very, very challenging times, and from that moment on — and I was in grade 11 at the time — every mental health expert told me to write. 

The reason for that was, if there is a lot of inner chaos inside of you, the best way to manage something so abstract is to make it concrete. By putting it on paper, we can manipulate it. We can actually start working with it. For a long, long time, I was writing — I wouldn’t even call it journaling cause it was just madness. Just getting things out. 

At some point, I decided I wanted to tell stories, and it took me a very, very long time to stop associating pain with writing. That was only recently that I was able to make that connection, and that really freed me to start writing more creatively.

[02:04] Chelsea: Is there advice that you go back to that you always want to tell people who are aspiring writers?

[02:11] Ann: I kept making the same mistakes, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong until this young man dared me to “follow my dreams.” So I took my first creative writing course through the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto.

The School of Continuing Studies is a professional faculty. It’s not an academic one like the main university. We were a group of writers focused on learning the craft and business of writing fiction. I learned how to craft a story that would sell.

I also learned how to give and receive critical feedback on writing. Because I think when one stays in a vacuum and they just write and pump pages and pages without getting that critical feedback, you’ll get caught in a loop. I would advise anyone starting to write is to have a close set of people around you that will provide the support. Because the other big thing: rejection is everywhere. There’s very few positions where you’re constantly being rejected. And I find only another writer, who has “normalized” rejection, gets the heartache. It’s just finding a core group of people that understands and supports your journey, and truly wants you to succeed. Because your success is their success…

I would really encourage anyone not to isolate themselves, but to get out and attend events, meet people. Trust a small group of people to have your back.

The journey is long, and it can be difficult. Setting yourself up for success, regardless of what that success might look like. One might never publish. One might define success as having written something. But regardless of how you define success, I have found one cannot do it alone. 

[04:42] Chelsea: When it came to challenges that you faced in your career, I can only imagine how those people were there to lift you back up or help you through it. Were there any challenges that come to mind, and do you think writers of the next generation will face the same ones?

[05:02] Ann: [One of] the biggest challenges that I had when I started writing in the 80s and 90s was that Canadian society looked very different. Some of my earliest challenges, some of the feedback I got, in the early 90s, were really difficult to navigate. I had editors tell me that, for example, it’s not “Canadian” enough for people to pick up and buy. I was writing about my characters working in variety stores… It was a world I knew. 

To be told that the story isn’t “Canadian” enough versus you need to work on honing your character development… That you can work with. For a long time, it was difficult to push through. The other thing is as writers, it’s important we check our core values. The stories I was writing were stories I wanted to write about. So it went against my core values to write about things that didn’t feel authentic to me, although I was advised that that would sell.

At the same time — this sounds terrible — but I was so used to rejection. It’s almost like the person who buys a lottery ticket weekly, knowing that they will not win, but they do it out of habit.

I did not know that Psy would come out with Gangnam Style and suddenly make everything Korean cool. That K-dramas, movies like Parasite would win an Academy Award… I didn’t know then that almost half the people on the bus would have a Samsung cell phone or drive a Korean car. Society changed. And somehow, my story fit into that change. When my debut novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, came out in 2016, at the same time, CBC had Kim’s Convenience, which turned out to be their #1 comedy. The creator of Kim’s Convenience, Ins Choi, came to Canada in 1975, like I did. Both of us were telling the same stories over and over again. Society just came along and it fit in.

[07:55] Chelsea: K-Pop is now a huge part. Number one movie on Netflix was K-Pop Demon Hunters. It is integrated in ways we don’t even really notice anymore. That’s a vastly big difference than at the beginning of your career, and it must be very cool to see. 

[08:15] Ann: It’s so bizarre. Once upon a time, I thought, oh my gosh, when my mom passes away, I’ll never eat Korean food again, cause I don’t cook it. I sincerely believed that. Whereas now, there are so many Korean restaurants everywhere: Korean BBQs, Korean supermarkets… It’s remarkable how it is so beyond my imagination how things have turned out.

[08:50] Chelsea: You’ve written several books. Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, Once Upon an Hour (children’s book), and your newest, All Things Under the Moon. Do you see all of your writing as part of a niche within the genre you write in? And if you do, what drew you to that niche?

[09:15] Ann: I have been focused on telling women’s stories. I write to process and understand myself. The first novel I wrote, Kay’s, explores mother-daughter relationships. I really wanted to tell a story about the Korean-Canadian experience in Canada because it hadn’t been told in that way. I wrote All Things Under the Moon because I had the idea of women needing other women, and that was something my editor had said: Women need other women to survive. I had that running through my head. Especially in stories about war and political conflict, a lot of stories have strong male protagonists or tell big stories. 

I wanted to tell a story about women, but I wanted to tell a small story. Yes, the backdrop has the Japanese occupation, and it’s just horrible. But if you zoom in, you find this little villager who doesn’t want to marry the man that her father has chosen for her, who secretly just wants to go to school like her brother. I was also aware, because I’m an educator, about how girls around the world are still denied an education. 

The story was inspired by my great-grandmother, set in 1924. Here we are in 2026 and there are parts of the world where girls either risk their lives to pursue an education, or they’re denied. Access to literacy, access to what I believe are basic human rights. If I can write a story that can be used as a launching point or as a tool to have conversations about bigger things like girls and literacy, that’s what I hope readers walk away from reading this historical fiction set in 1924 Korea in this tiny village that no one’s heard of. 

What’s at the heart of the story, it’s about the role women play to advance each other. It’s about the role that education plays… if girls are given a chance. This is what could happen. I think great books begin simple conversations. 

[12:48] Chelsea: Are there any book recommendations you have for anyone watching?

[12:53] Ann: Right now, I would definitely recommend this book. 

[Image of Stephen Marche’s On Writing and Failure]

I just started reading it. It says, “Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world.”

I would really encourage readers to check out and support Canadian authors. It’s fascinating because when I was reading back in the 70s and 80s, it felt very different. It was lovely. I’m a huge fan of Margaret Laurence. Today, I think the CanLit landscape looks and feels completely different. 

Right now, my big kick is to read debut authors. On a very personal note, there’s books by Korean-Canadian authors now – fiction. I just blurbed Inheritance by Jane Park. I’m a fan of Jinwoo Park. His novel, Oxford Soju Club, was released last year and is doing phenomenally well.

If people can check out debut authors who live and work in Canada, I think as a community, as a society, there’s wonderful stories.  

[14:37] END