Read the Acknowledgments ft. Jade Song & Ling Ling Huang

00:00:27 Fiction Writer Opportunities! (Learn more at blcklst.com/programs)

00:05:21 When and why Jade and Ling Ling started writing

00:10:00 Ling Ling on how she found her agent

00:13:08 Jade on how she found her agent

00:14:36 Questions our guests wished they’d asked their agents earlier

00:18:22 Ling Ling and Jade on life before the start of their book career

00:24:39 Ling Ling on the correlation between annotating music and writing fiction

00:27:28 Origin story of the novel I LOVE YOU DON’T DIE

00:29:20 What Jade learned about herself writing the new novel

00:30:25 Ling Ling on where IMMACULATE CONCEPTION originated from

00:34:00 Jade on her writing process

00:43:20 Jade on writing a screenplay vs. writing a novel

00:48:22 The collaborative nature of publishing a book

00:51:40 Ling Ling on her next novel (currently in progress)

00:58:10 Questions from Listeners

Jade Song is a writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her debut novel Chlorine was awarded the Alex Award and the Writer's Center First Novel Prize, lauded as "visionary and disturbing," and translated into Mandarin Chinese, French, Turkish, among other languages. Song's second novel, I Love You Don’t Die, was published March 2026, and their debut short story collection, Ox Ghost Snake Demon, will be published in spring 2027. She has received support & fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, MASS MoCA, and the Black List, which selected their adapted screenplay of CHLORINE for its annual Writers Lab.

Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. She plays with several ensembles, including the Oregon Symphony, Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and the Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy Award in 2021. Her debut novel, Natural Beauty, was a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction. Her second novel, Immaculate Conception, was published in May 2025 and is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.

Randy Winston is an artist and curator who serves as Creative Director of Fiction at The Black List, and formerly served as Director of Writing Programs at The Center for Fiction, where he managed, curated, and directed the production of all writing courses, the illustrious First Novel Prize, the famed Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship, and the highly sought Writers Studio membership. Prior to his work at The Center, Winston served as Fiction Editor of Slice Literary Magazine for six years and has over ten years of executive admin experience in higher education. Before his MFA, Randy served as editor-in-chief of, formerly Southern Polytechnic State University, now Kennesaw State University’s online and print student publication, in Marietta, Georgia. He is a 2016 graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing (Fiction) at The New School. A former Orion Magazine trustee, Winston sits on the board at WriteOn NYC.

Read The Acknowledgements is an educational live visual podcast designed for book and writing professionals to share their industry experiences and help give writers a clear picture of the ecosystem that is publishing.

This podcast series exists, in part, to fundraise for writers and literary non-profits in need. Attendance is free, and we encourage viewers and listeners to make donations to writer support funds such as the Authors League Fund and Baldwin for the Arts.

Always available via Apple, Spotify and the series archive here on our Substack.

Read the Acknowledgments is brought to you by The Black List, LLC.

CHLORINE by Jade Song

I LOVE YOU DON’T DIE by Jade Song

NATURAL BEAUTY by Ling Ling Huang

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION by Ling Ling Huang

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