From Queens with Love: Writers on the Borough that Inspired Them: Alvin Eng, Heather Eng, Sylvia Chen

To celebrate the World’s Borough Bookshop’s third anniversary, these native Queens writers will share how growing up here shaped their lives, writing, and art.

Alvin Eng, author of Our Laundry, Our Town
Heather Eng, author of Double Happiness
Sylvia Chen, author of Tricky Chopsticks and Sparkles for Sunny

Heather Eng is a third-generation Chinese American writer who grew up in Queens, New York. She graduated from Boston University with a journalism degree, and worked as a newspaper writer, web editor, and senior marketing leader in the tech industry. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter. DOUBLE HAPPINESS is her first novel.

Alvin Eng is a native Queens author/playwright, songwriter, educator and performer who is thrilled to be part of a second event at WBB! As a New York Public Library Long-Term Fellow, he began researching a companion book to his acclaimed memoir, OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond. His next book, BOW’RY BUM: Searching for Grandfather, Burroughs and Punk, examines the profound impact of of The Opium Wars and opium on the Chinese diaspora in NYC of his grandfather’s generation as well as on the 1970s “heroin chic” punk/counterculture of his own formative years. Plays and solo performance works have been seen Off-Broadway, in Paris, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China. Currently developing a solo acoustic punk raconteur performance piece, “Here Comes Johnny Yen Again (or How I Kicked Punk).”

Sylvia Chen born and raised in Queens, New York, is the award-winning author of picture books Tricky Chopsticks and Sparkles for Sunny: A Lunar New Year Story. She loves crafting picture books that spark kids’ interest in STEAM and creative thinking.