In the year before the Age of Covid, I had just started raising my hand for speaking gigs—tentatively, of course, because I had and still have a very young career in writing, and always with a sense of a shock whenever my applications were accepted. And whenever I shuffled to my seat on a panel or stepped up to a podium to deliver a presentation, I’d scan the crowd—deliberately, methodically, checking each row and each face. I was looking for something quite specific. I was looking for those faces that, like mine, don’t look like “the norm” here in Utah. Hell, let’s be honest—that difference applies even outside of geographic…

The first storyteller who taught me the value of stories was my Taiwanese immigrant mother. Her lessons and advice always came couched in a long-winded story or parable or anecdote rather than as a simple, straightforward admonishment, delivered in an “are you listening?” tone that demanded her audience’s attention more forcefully than did the most skilled orators’. I’m telling you, Rome’s best senators had nothing on my mother. As an impatient teenager, I perfected the art of the eye-roll thanks to the hours I’d had to listen to her recount the fable about the frivolous prince who pierced his ear and thus pierced his destiny and died a poor, penniless…