Today I get to interview my 3rd author,  Neel Patel. 

Neel Patel is a screenwriter and author who grew up in Champaign, Illinois and currently lives in Los Angeles, where he writes for TV and film.  His first book, If You See Me, Don't Say Hi, is a New York Times Book Review Editors’ choice, an NPR Best Book of 2018, and has been optioned for television.

His writing has appeared in Elle India, The Paris Review, on Buzzfeed.com, and many more

I chat with him about his debut Novel, Tell Me How To Be, which I found out about after Lilly Singh gave him a shoutout on her platform, Lilly’s Library.  It focuses on a mother-son relationship, Indian-American stereotypes, and has the best Guju (Gujarati) phrases sprinkled in throughout the book.  What else do you want?

We also chat about how we were both bad at math, his coming out story, why stories like this are so important to the Indian-American community, why leaving home and then coming back helped inspire his novel, and all that yummy Indian homemade food we both miss.