Ever J. Yan

I have always been a storyteller.

When I was in elementary school, other kids would gather around as I told them stories I made up. On the bus ride home, I invented a game not unlike Dungeons & Dragons—though I didn’t know such games existed then. I called it the Selection Game. There were no dice, no props—only imagination, intuition, and the shared thrill of choosing what happened next.

By middle school, storytelling became more deliberate. I wrote short pieces, drew comics, and even created an audiobook with my cousin, recording dialogue and background music using two tape recorders. I never stopped writing after that—mostly fantasy, sometimes science fiction—publishing stories here and there, earning small amounts, finding readers, and quietly holding on to a dream of living as a novelist.

I began writing in Chinese, having grown up in China. Seventeen years ago, I moved to Canada to pursue a master’s degree in urban planning. After graduate school, I stayed in Canada and worked in telecommunications, software, and later the data industry. For years, almost all of my writing was in English—essays, reports, documentation. When I tried to return to creative writing in Chinese, it was painful. The structured, logic-driven professional English writing choked my free-flowing, emotional, and metaphorical Chinese writing. It felt like I had lost my voice in my own language—like becoming disabled. But eventually, I did find my voice again: renewed, quiet and controlled, yet more powerful.

More years passed. Eventually, I felt brave enough to attempt something I had never done before: creative writing in English. My Black Sun is the result of that long, uneven journey—across languages, countries, and identities.

I am no longer the little kid sitting by the basketball field, telling stories. Yet the dream is still with me. One day, I will walk into my boss’s office and say: I quit. From that day until the end of my life, I will live as a novelist.