In our Season 7 premiere, Jemimah Wei talks about her debut novel, The Original Daughter, and how growing up in Singapore shaped the way she thinks about storytelling, identity, and our relationship with technology. She and Jared also explore what Singapore can teach us about the rapidly changing world of AI, the ways technology is training us to move faster than we were meant to, and how reading and writing can alter our experience of time. Their conversation asks what it means to resist the pressure to rush, why speed should never be the goal for its own sake, and how stories can help us hold onto what makes us human.
Jemimah was born and raised in Singapore and splits her time between Singapore and the United States. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and formerly held the Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Felipe P. De Alba Fellowship at Stanford University and Columbia University respectively. Her highly anticipated debut novel, The Original Daughter, debuted at #1 on The Straits Times bestseller list, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. The Original Daughter won the Country Award for the Chōmmanard International Women’s Literary Award, was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, and was named a Best Book of Spring by TIME, Foreign Policy, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, and more.
MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack, Hanamori Skoblow and Brié Goumaz. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.
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