On this episode, we sit down with author Allison King to chat about her debut novel The Phoenix Pencil Company, a novel that's part historical fiction, part magical realism, and part sapphic romance about a young woman who discovers her family's secret magical power to reconstruct anything written by a pencil while taking care of her ailing grandmother and learning about her own family's history from Shanghai to Taiwan to the States.

Follow Allison on Instagram at @allisonkingwrites and check out her debut novel The Phoenix Pencil Company available now on the Books & Boba bookshop!

Books & Boba is a podcast dedicated to reading and featuring books by Asian and Asian American authors

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The Books & Boba July 2025 pick is Bingsu for Two by Sujin Witherspoon

This podcast is part of Potluck: An Asian American Podcast Collective