Of Bees and Mist: A Novel

ERICK SETIAWAN was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents and moved to the United States in 1991. He is a graduate of Stanford University and currently lives in San Francisco.

Marguerite Gavin is a seasoned theater and screen actor as well as a popular audiobook narrator. Holding a B.F.A. in theater and an M.F.A. in acting, she is the artistic director of a youth theater program in Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and son.

Biography

At age sixteen, he left his family and moved to the United States. He knew three people and barely spoke English, yet was somehow convinced that he could compete with the top students to get into the best colleges. His resolution/delusion pushed him to work hard. The following year, his first choice, Harvard, rejected him, but fortunately Stanford had a lower standard. To this day, he believes that they admitted him by mistake.

In college, he wanted to study English, but his shyness and insecurity about his adopted language prevented him from enrolling in classes that required him to speak. Instead, he chose to major in Psychology and Computer Science, going as far as getting a Master's in the latter. Bafflingly enough, studying about mental disorders and complex algorithms only increased his hunger for literature. Once too often, he shuffled aside his term papers and problem sets to lose himself in a novel.

After graduation, he began his tenure as a software engineer in San Francisco. By the end of the first year, he knew that his heart was not in it. Confronted with the risk of being a corporate burnout at twenty-six, he turned to writing in his spare time. To the exasperation of his bosses, he began coming to work late and taking longer and longer lunch breaks in order to write. Several years, two failed novels, and countless short stories later, he decided to quit his job to finish writing Of Bees and Mist. At the time, he had no book deal and knew no one in publishing, but he pursued his passion with the same stubborn resolution/delusion that had motivated him earlier. He sold Of Bees and Mist four years after he started it.

Good To Know

"I sing Richard Marx at karaoke. Still."

"Before I devoted all my waking hours to finishing Of Bees and Mist, I was a software engineer. In order to write, I would come to work late and leave early, not counting the ungodly long lunch hours I pilfered from my bosses. Yet instead of firing me, they kept promoting me and giving me raises! I remain boggled to this day."

"When I lived in Indonesia, I fought with my parents for two years before they finally let me go to America at age sixteen. For reasons best known to themselves, many people tried their hardest to stop my parents. There was one woman who supposedly graduated from Harvard and who took it upon herself to scare my mother to death. She said that the streets of the U.S.A. were teeming with drug dealers, gangsters, and serial killers—all of which could be easily confirmed by a viewing of Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs. But the worst part of it, she said, were American women. 'They'll weave their many webs around your son and seduce him,' she told my mother. 'Once they have him trapped, they'll suck him dry and leave him broken and overdosed on the street.' I don't know which Harvard she went to, but it sure was a good thing that I didn't listen to her!"

"I consider it both a lifelong pleasure and a non-negotiable necessity to be a reader. I don't understand people who don't—or won't—read, or those who prefer TV to books. And to write is the absolute thrill and privilege for me. Most mornings, I wake up not knowing if I'm Chinese, Indonesian, or American, and it is only through writing that I can create a landscape in which someone like myself would feel at ease and not be branded a foreigner. Books have no borders, no locks, no exclusionary policies. I feel incredibly blessed and grateful to be in this position. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy Of Bees and Mist!"