We feel braver and a little bit wiser after our glorious chat with the absolute king that is Brad Riew. We're so grateful Brad made the time to chat with us this week even though he wasn't feeling the best and know his heartfelt words will touch many. We can't wait for you all to tune in, but first, more about Brad:
Brad Riew is an MFA candidate in Fiction at New York University's creative writing program. He graduated from Harvard College in 2018 with a degree in Psychology, where he won the Ecker Short Story Prize. The Last Tiger, co-written with his younger sister Julia Riew, is his first novel. Brad lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About THE LAST TIGER:
Inspired by true stories from the authors’ grandparents’ lives during one of the darkest periods in Korean history,The Last Tiger is a debut young adult fantasy novel about the power of love to give voice to a silenced people.
In a colonized land where tigers are being hunted to extinction and ancient magic stirs, two star-crossed teens from opposite worlds—Lee Seung, a servant yearning for freedom, and Choi Eunji, a noble girl defying tradition—join forces to try and reshape their respective fates.
But their relationship evolves from begrudging accomplices to bitter adversaries as they soon find themselves on opposite sides of a battle over the last tiger, a symbol of their people’s lost freedom and key to the liberation of their country. As the ties between Seung and Eunji are complicated by their conflicting loyalties, tensions rise—especially when a charming princeling of the empire begins to rival for Eunji's affection.
In this friends-to-enemies-to-lovers story of forbidden romance, antagonists turned allies, oppression and liberation, neither Seung nor Eunji can abandon their mission—or each other. And as they embark on separate quests to find the elusive creature, each must also find the power within themselves to make their own destiny.