Books can take years to write, months to query, and from the point of sale to a publisher, another two years to publish. A story can take a year to write, another year to polish, six months to hear back about, and another six months to a year to come out in print or online. In those early years, how does one keep going when the horizon seems so indefinite? How do you know if you’re going in the right direction, how does one learn to edit themselves, and when do you know when a story is done? And how do you find your people along the way?

Writing is long, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. Join us for a discussion with Jemimah Wei, current Writer-in-Residence at the Hemingway House, on building a writing life and routine, seeking community, and persisting through the drafts.

Jemimah Wei is the author of “The Original Daughter” (Doubleday Books, 2025). Born and raised in Singapore, she is now based between Singapore and the United States. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore’s National Arts Council, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Writers in Paradise, she was named one of Narrative’s “30 below 30” writers and is a Francine Ringold Award for New Writers honouree. Her fiction has won the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and appears in Guernica, Narrative, and Nimrod, among others. For close to a decade, Jemimah was a host for various broadcast and digital channels, and has written and produced short films and travel guides for Laneige, Airbnb, and Nikon.