ABOUT THE BOOK

Acclaimed author of Ash Malinda Lo returns with her most personal and ambitious novel yet, a gripping story of love and duty set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Red Scare.

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father–despite his hard-won citizenship–Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

The companion book, A Scatter of Lightwill be released Oct 4, 2022.

Here’s what the National Book Award judges had to say about it:

Last Night at the Telegraph Club glows with desire and hums with sensuality as sapphic romance flashes against fear and intolerance. In lustrous detail, Malinda Lo materializes Chinese American Lily and white Kath’s love story during the rise of 1950’s McCarthyism. Lo’s exquisite prose contrasts Lily’s unhurried discovery of her sexuality against Kath’s unquestioned belonging at the Telegraph Club. Lo beckons readers, sentence by restrained sentence, into this incandescent novel of queer possibility.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Malinda Lo is the New York Times bestselling author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, winner of the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, as well as Michael L. Printz and Walter Dean Myers honors.

Her debut novel Ash, a Sapphic retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda’s short fiction and nonfiction has been published by The New York Times, NPR, Autostraddle, The Horn Book, and multiple anthologies. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their dog. She writes the biweekly newsletter Lo & Behold on writing and culture, and she can be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Her website is malindalo.com.

Representation Matters

Learn more about other shows with related themes.

Get Into It

NPR

Interview with Malinda Lo

“I’m very proud to report that this is the first book of mine that my mother has read.”

Kirkus Reviews

Review: Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Finally, the intersectional, lesbian, historical teen novel so many readers have been waiting for.

Watch Malinda Lo read an excerpt from Last Night at the Telegraph Club at the (virtual) 2021 National Book Awards

Watch Malindo Lo’s acceptance speech at the (virtual) 2021 National Book Awards