Joan Wong worked at Penguin Random House in New York for the past five years as a book cover designer. Among her well-known work are the paperback covers of the Crazy Rich Asians series by Kevin Kwan, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists. She could easily have stayed at her job indefinitely and followed a fairly predictable path of success as a designer.

However, in evaluating her next steps, this plan sounded a little too safe. She decided to leave her full time job in order to embark on a year long trip around the world that began in October 2017.

Production & Narration by Charis Poon
Illustration by Joan Wong
Audio by Elphick Wo

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