But I Smile Anyway…

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Today, I am honoured to present you with an opportunity to sign up to a chance to hear award winning journalist, Michelle Chan talking about her new book, Song, with a chance to ask questions, after.

In this free online session, Michelle Jana Chan will give a short reading from her book ‘Song’ and then a Q&A session.

Sign Up Link: https://www.meetup.com/The-Writers-Initiative/events/280961013/

Time and Date: On Sunday 17th Oct from 1 pm to 2 pm.

Event Agenda:

1. Michelle will give a short reading from her book ‘Song.’
2. After this a Q&A session of around 25 minutes for questions in relation to her creative writing process, the book and the publishing process.

SONG:

A sweeping historical epic following one boy’s long journey from rags to riches, by the award-
winning journalist and travel editor of Vanity Fair.

Blurb

Song is just a boy when he sets out, in the year 1870, from Lishui village in China. Brimming
with courage and ambition, he leaves behind his family, hoping he’ll make his fortune and return
home. Chasing tales of sugarcane, rubber, and gold, Song embarks upon a perilous voyage
across the oceans to the British colony of Guiana, but once there he discovers riches are not so
easy to come by and he is forced into labouring as an indentured plantation worker.
This is only the beginning of Song’s remarkable life, but as he finds himself between places and
between peoples, and increasingly aware that the circumstances of birth carry more weight than
accomplishments or good deeds, Song fears he may live as an outsider forever.
This beautifully written and evocative story spans nearly half a century and half the globe, and
though it is set in another century, Song’s story of emigration and the quest for an opportunity to
improve his life is timeless.
Chan’s own family lineage lays the path for the tale of Song, as she is descended from
indentured Chinese immigrants who immigrated to British Guiana in the mid-1800s. Her father
grew up there but left in the 1960s—searching, in turn, for a better life in England.

“A wonderfully lush and atmospheric of survival against all odds.”

—Bernardine
Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other

About the Author

Michelle Jana Chan is an award-winning journalist and travel editor of Vanity Fair in the UK, where she presents the magazine’s digital Future Series. Formerly, Michelle was a BBC TV presenter, news producer at CNN International, and reporter at Newsweek. She was a Morehead-Cain scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.