HEY THERE.
Irena Huang is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY. You can usually find her snuggled up with her dogs, Griffin and Nova, and surrounded by half-empty mugs of coffee and tea.
She received her Master of Arts in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and International Relations from Mills College.
For the past four years, she has been a Speaking Agent + Literary Agent at BEOTIS, a boutique talent agency that represents a leading roster of multi-hyphenate artists and writers of color.
As a former restaurant kid, she is a volunteer with Send Chinatown Love as event planning support and was an editor and writer on the MADE HERE cookbook, which was James Beard Award-nominated and featured in Vogue, Forbes, Food Network, and Bon Appétit (Best Cookbooks of Fall 2023).
FAQs
Tell me about your dogS.
I’m so glad you asked! Usually I start chatting about them, completely unprompted, so this is a nice change. Griffin is a German Shepherd/Lab mix who is likely four-years-old. I adopted him from the South LA Animal Shelter in September of 2019 and he is both the light of my life and a complete chaos agent. He is very anxious and his favorite activity is chasing a squeaky ball. Nova is a Golden Retriever puppy who was re-homed and quite literally brought to my doorstep when she was 9 months old. She is also fantastically chaotic but is my little ghostly shadow. Together, Griffin and Nova are the best chaos team in the universe and the snuggliest buddies.
What is your favorite book?
Gosh, asking the hard questions! My favorite romance novel is Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert. My favorite book of poetry is Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar and my favorite fantasy novel is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I also love anything by N.K. Jemisin, Helen Hoang, Alisha Rai, Octavia Butler, and Erin Morgenstern. Recently I’ve been loving the Psy-Changeling series by Nalini Singh and space operas like anything from Jessie Mihalik.
What Writing resources helped you?
In August 2020, I signed up for Jeanne De Vita’s Romance Writing Academy and that gave me the push and confidence to start writing. I learned so much about structure, characters, and writing from that course. In March 2020, I enrolled in a Diasporic Storytelling class taught by Jordan Alam through Kundiman.
Reading other incredible writers in the romance genre has also taught me a great deal about writing a fantastic story.
do you actually live in brooklyn?
New in Town, the first novel I ever wrote, is set in Brooklyn. I was lucky enough to move to Brooklyn in 2020, but a global pandemic was happening so it felt more like I was living in my apartment than in any particular place. New in Town has since been shelved, but just like Brooklyn, I’ll always love it.
what do you do when you’re not writing?
I love to cook and bake! Check out my Instagram story to see what I’m whipping up. I also love coffee shops and museums — nothing gets me out of the house faster than a good latte and some statues. Most evenings, I’m reading and doing yoga. In the future, I’m looking forward to my first ever solo trip (!!) to Portugal, learning more about textile arts, and improving my Chinese.
projects on the horizon?
I’m percolating a second book project that is set in Chicago. So far, the protagonists are rival chefs in a high stakes food competition… we’ll see who wins! Spoiler: they both win (each other’s love).
My academic background is in English literature of the long eighteenth-century, and I have a few projects on the back burner. I’m still exploring what academic writing can look like without institutional affiliation.
Romance is my favorite genre and will always be my emotional center, but my recent reading in paranormal/romantasy is inspiring a werewolf novel — stay tuned!